A few weeks ago I was in Rijswijk (a nearby city) and I spotted a stork sunning themselves in a nearby park:
It was in the same area that I spotted a nest a few months ago:
Posts Tagged With: Birds
Birds and buses (Or: Spotted around town)
This past Wednesday was the Dutch provincial elections and the water board elections (English Wikipedia). Both Marco and I voted (Marco for both; I could only vote for the water board as a non-Dutchie).
While shopping in the city centre that day I noticed a stembus or “voting bus” from the local news website Omroep West at the Grote Markstraat:
The bus was an old diesel bus, and you could definitely smell it.
A few days ago I was in Rijswijk, a neighboring town just outside of The Hague. At the top of a building (about three stories high) I spotted a stork building a nest.
Pretty cool.
And, for a touch of randomness: Starlings put on nightly show above Amsterdam’s Sarphatipark, but poop coats neighborhood from nltimes.nl
A hidden piece of nature (Or: FOAM back terrace)
Recently I took a few photos of the back terrace of the FOAM restaurant in The Hague. It’s a tiny splash of nature, only 5 tables or so. On the other side of the foliage is a playground, so you constantly hear the murmur of kids playing.
And a look at the upper level (on the other side is the playground):
I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the flowers, either. These were s a vibrant shade of purple.
For this visit Marco and I just had a hot drink (cappuccino for me, matcha latte for Marco) before we took home our “Foam@home” meal. This time it was a very delicious Sri Lankan coconut curry.
And if you have stuck around this long, I will treat you to a photo of a very, very plump (and slow) pigeon that was waddling around in the garden.
It is perhaps a bit hard to tell how plump it was, but it was probably about 50% larger than it needed to be. In the photo its chest extends just past the chair leg. I was surprised it was able to fly away in the end… but it did.
Swans and ducks by Koekamp (Or: November has arrived)
Yesterday I went to Malieveld, the first time in a few months. The last time I was there it was summer and oh so nice and warm… but I chose to avoid it for a while because of the carnival taking up most of the area.
On the way to Malieveld I passed by Koekamp, a small park with deer, swan and ducks. This time I saw more swans then I ever have:
In the background joggers and cyclists rush past. I also saw a swan chasing after two poor ducks for whatever reason. Maybe they stole its lunch?
It’s definitely fall now. Leaves are falling off the trees in buckets, with a cold breeze and spitting rain (motregen in Dutch).
Attack of the birds (Or: That poor tree)
The birds were back this afternoon, and this time they stayed for almost an hour. Fun fact: it actually sounds more like a low, distant rumble when you have hundreds of birds chirping outside your back door.
I don’t think you can fit any additional birds in that tree. And that was actually the smaller tree. The birds also claimed a much larger tree next to this one as their own, but it was less photogenic.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
Black skies (Or: Birds dancing across the sky)
When I went to the kitchen to clean up after dinner this evening I heard a strange noise. At first I thought it was water running, making me think it was raining outside. But no – I looked outside and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The ground was (relatively) dry.
…Until waves and waves of birds flew up over our apartment complex. Hundreds of birds, flying in undulating waves, this way and that. It looked like my own personal nature screensaver. After a few minutes most of them landed on the large tree on the other side of the apartment complex. It made me wonder: could those thin branches really could hold 8 to 10 birds without snapping? (I could not help thinking of Pixar’s short For the birds on Youtube.) I stood and watched for a while until they left. I mean, it is definitely better than washing dishes, right?
Unconfirmed rumor: Grand Prix to return to Zandvoort on 2 May 2021 from nltimes.nl. The first Dutch Grand Prix since 1985 was supposed to be held this year, but was postponed due to the corona crisis. I suppose it is a rumor, but really – how could Zandvoort not be on the 2021 race calendar?
Dutch state broadcaster pulls logo from vans after attacks from theguardian.com. The world is a weird place these days. The state broadcaster (NOS) has removed their logo because of the abuse they have been receiving.
Anniversary year (Or: 150 years of Bijenkorf)
Bijenkorf is a Dutch department store which opened its first store in Amsterdam in 1870. 150 years ago! To celebrate this, they scheduled a year of celebrations in 2020 (thehagueonline.com). For example, there are unique shop windows (Bijenkorf always has beautiful holiday windows), unique merchandise to buy, guided tours, events to attend…
The only problem – which you can see coming with the date of March 10, 2020 in the article from thehagueonline.com – is the corona crisis rearing its ugly head. The carefully scheduled events and tours now read tijdelijk niet beschikbaar or temporarily not available.
In other news:
- The Dutch corona app will be called CoronaMelder (nltimes.nl) and will use Bluetooth. CoronaMelder translates to Corona Reporter.
- Kuikentjes bevrijd op de Oude Trambaan from regio15.nl – baby chicks fell through a pedestrian bridge and couldn’t get out on their own. They were ultimately freed by firemen who removed a few of the bridge planks to reach the chicks.
- The Guardian has a very interesting article called ‘Landscape of fear’: what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists although that topic admittedly isn’t for everyone. But there’s an informative tie-in with the Dutch Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve (where thousands of animals ended up starving due to a lack of predators in the area) and the ultimate changes to the ecosystem which occurred because of the abandoned carcasses. This caused a great amount of controversy in The Netherlands because it was a conscious choice not to feed the animals to help them survive the winter.
It’s a bird! (Or: Graffiti in Delft)
Last month or so Marco and I went to Ikea in Delft to look for some random supplies. We ended up purchasing funnels for the kitchen (random) and reading lights for the bedroom (intended).
On the way to Ikea (by bus) we went under an overpass which had some really interesting graffiti…
That’s one aggie bird.
Chaos (Or: Feeding the birds)
A random shot of someone feeding the birds in a nearby canal in The Hague:
Picture about 4 times as many birds than shown – this was the close-up. There’s even some swans in there waiting to get fed (and of course due to their large size they get first choice at the food!).
Laziness (Or: Pigeons who refuse to move)
A few days ago I had to make a trip to Albert Heijn to get some groceries. On the way there I saw a flock of pigeons just lounging around listlessly. One of them was even lying down, not caring at all that people were walking only a few feet away from it.
The birds have a pretty good life in this city. Plenty of food and not many predators. We also have a lot of seagulls that hang around in The Hague. At first I thought they come over from the nearby beach in Scheveningen but they seem to hang around in The Hague year-round. I once saw 20-30 seagulls screeching loudly at some point across the street and dive bombing the area, only to realize after a few seconds that some woman had dumped a lot of old stale bread over the railing down to the street below. That bread was completely gone, with the exception of crumbs, in less than 30 seconds.
Of course, on the way back, the same pigeon pictured above was there, still not moving…
Life in the Hague 