The crane spent all the nights in the vicinity of Novo Milosevo-town, in Serbia on wetlands including a number of ponds. Foraging trips headed to the nearby cultivated fields at a radius of 7 km from the overnight site. It was likely that the crane will continue its migration to the south at any moment.
Prior to Christmas the eastern-Europe was impacted by a high pressure. As a result, temperatures dropped permanently below zero causing a chilly weather. Matti-crane could well have moved to the south-west downwind. However, it took the opposite route by heading to Hungary. On 24 December the crane foraged 165 km to the north of the Serbian foraging grounds. On the next day he returned 100 km to the south and thrived in the vicinity of Szeged-town until 31 December when it flew back to Serbia, but this time to the west side of the Tisza-river. The satellite-crane has now lingered in Hungarian puszta longer than any other Finnish crane to date. It now appears likely that the crane may try to over-winter in Balkan instead of moving to the south.
For ten days all the locations arrived from the same area on the west side of the Tisza-river suggesting the crane had found better foraging areas. According to the sensor data the behavior of the crane was normal. On 10 January the crane left Tisza and flew circa 50 km to the south-east.
On the next day the crane however had changed position 23 km to the west and was subsequently located there on the following 3 days in the vicinity of Novi Becej-town near Tisza-river.
On 14th January the satellite-crane removed approximately 10 km to the north-east between the towns of Basald and Nemetov Salas and stayed there for 20 days. In practice the crane returned to the same area where it dwelled in early December 2007. Matti has now broken the record and lingered longer than any other Finnish crane on Serbian puszta.
According to a Serbian crane expert a small number of cranes has over-wintered in the vicinity of this area annually. Many farmers did not thresh their cornfields during the last autumn and as a result the over-wintering cranes are having abundant food resources. Nearly spring like warm spell has freed the cultivated corn-fields from snow and the mild weather continued over the whole period of time.
On 4th February2008 Matti flew 15 km to the north-west landing 6 km to the east of town-Ada. The area is comprised of dried meanders, surrounded by cultivated maize fields. On 9th February a flock of 100-150 cranes was observed in the vicinity of the town of Kikinda. On 16 th February a cold weather including blizzards moved over Balkan. However, the Serbian crane experts were able to locate Matti’s flock consisting of 1200 vigilant individuals. On the next day they were able to pick up with there telescopes from the multitude two crane individuals that were colour-banded in Finland.