the city kingfisher

many many years ago, we took often sometimes around may some days of to go to the east of the netherlands to look near some streams for the kingfisher, we did find them, we lived with the idea you have to get up very early, put a lot of outdoor clothing on, and wait until they got hungry and maybe show up.

now it is about 40 years later, living officially city center of a small town, behind us it is 10 meters to a large ditch, large for foreigners, we are more used to it. there is a busy road behind that and a complete industry after that, but yesterday afternoon a kingfisher simply landed on the corner of the roof of our shed and just started to look around and at us, who open mouthed just standing for the window of the living room, luckily for both we were both around, it woulds have been hard to believe.

and today we found out it was simply a garden inspection, because again late afternoon he was back again, even more nearer the living room window and inspection our once mini pond, it started out with a large bucket for the frogs and toads, no fish it was only 90 liters of water.
a few years ago i found a square tub, about 120 liters, still not for fish. we nicked an idea from someone on the internet and instead of just water in it with some small plants, we just put a lot of large bricks in it and a few nice ones in the upper part to make a luxury bird drinking adventure, still room enough for the toads and some frogs. but today the kingfisher was inspecting our pond.

so we have i think to wait for tomorrow if he likes to take a second look.

i had them on the farm for years, they even got their own nesting wall on the border of a small pond between our fields. and i had seen the on winter flying over the ditch behind our home, but i would not have dared to put a bet on having a kingfisher on the corner of the shed.

as easy it was on the farm to get some very small fish, we are now in dubio if we need some small fish in our mini pond or not.

they love the not that cold winters, kingfisher need that access to fluid water, but if you read on the news how bad our water quality must be, that does not agree with what we can see our selves kingfishers love the small fish, and they hunt by eyesight.
the same with some plant life, there are changes in that too, but usually species that love cleaner water.

40 years ago we been told the kingfisher was very rare, only in the backlands of the netherlands on the borders of the last natural streams, all because of the bad water quality. the beautiful emerald with orangy and some white whizzing past you is now a much more common sight. and now even our own garden bird!

and it is a male, both halves of his beak are dark.

and we have the silly idea we now have a kingfisher who is on a break to study us, lucky guy, we are usually only late afternoon both in the living room. he does not have to get up that early, and no need for outdoor clothing.
still for us it feels like a treat. you cannot see too much kingfishers in your life.

This is quite exciting for me.  In the year 19-0-dot my father had an old timber framed tub (no, not the wife) that took us on regular trips around the inland waterways of England and Wales for a number of years - the kingfisher was a regular and spectacular sight to behold.  Storks were another regular species to be seen, also majestic in their own plumage.  You didn't even need binoculars to catch the sights, in their own natural environment they are generally more at ease so don't mind rubbing feathers with humans.

The same with gulls, if people didn't invade their natural environment on mass, they wouldn't be aggressive or frightened or go nicking your picnic.

If you want to see wildlife in all it's glory, then get off the beaten track.  You're very lucky to have a kingfisher lurking in the garden whilst casing the joint!  Do please let us know if it returns for another viewing anytime soon, it might be looking for a place to squat.

From my own experience, the most magical location to be in the heart of wildlife in all it's forms, particularly birds, is the highlands, lowlands and islands of Scotland.

After the old tub we would go traveling around Britain in an old camper van, not one of those mobile palaces so popular these days but a VW, at least 20 years old with a roof that half lifted - I had to sleep in that!  Most of the cooking was alfresco because the interior of the camper was pitifully cramped, you had to go outside just to breath.

I even witnessed salmon shooting the rapids upstream to their spawning ground.

The experiences were worth every moment, no where on earth could there be a more conducive place to be than Scotland, where you can literally be at one with nature.  I hasten to add, this was all happening when wild parking was still allowed, you weren't ushered by force into some fee paying camp site, unless of course that's what you wanted.

It saddens me to see all the theme parks springing up across the globe, it takes away the inherent intrepidity of mankind - the adventurous will to explore and be close to nature in all it's forms.  Not hanging around some fairground activity, all lights blazing and machines whirring.  It's enough to drive wildlife into hiding - and does!

of course, i will follow it up. for now we just hope it finds us strange or rare enough to pay us many visits.

in itself it is a small garden, one part is at best 24, 25 m2, then a 1.20m footpath and a piece of 16 m2 i once nicked from the council and now have as a official user. it ends in a steep slope, as in 2 meters down in almost straight line to the water. it has some small trees on it, maythorn, morus nigta and a a loose bit of hedge from dogwood, one grown into a tree. and lots of mostly botanical plants.

and there are lots of birds, ordinary ones like a 30 house sparrows, many collared doves, lots of jackdaw and up to 8 pairs if they get the chance of wood pigeon, one pair of stock doves, magpies, jays. all kinds of tits, blackbirds.

but there are very special ones too, like this spring a group of 17 red polls. 3 kinds of woodpeckers. but also blue heron, great egrets too. the cormorants are special, they always find a problem with negotiating of the trees.

and many many more. anytime you look you always can see birds. i do feed year round seed, and for the tits a block of fat, wintertime we do feed peanut butter in holes in a block of wood.

we have quite a lot of storks flying over too, the never left the area really, but there are at least 2 breeding stations within a 50 km. still there been true wild white storks in the larger area. i have been very active in the protection of that bird as a species, so they have little left to be curious about.

we made endless miles to see birds, never for these things like a life list,or i just like to study them, look at them, and i just like them. but that is the same for maybe too much animals and plants and the other stuff. most of the european species we have seen in their own spaces. some we missed, that is okay too, always nice to have some wishes out.

but it is great to still being able to see the birds and look at them, they are not shy at all, they simple know i am no longer quick enough to get in their way. my better half still makes a lot of miles to also look at birds and all other green stuff, but they do not mind that one either. it is just part of our lives, always been. but it is great how a small garden still can bring on so much diversity in species. still a kingfisher is very special.

we still kept looking back, forgetting to take a picture, with its special colours it does not need to be sharp to recognize it, but you have to take your eyes of to grab the phone, and we simply did not want to do that.

i have been all over scotland and the north yorkshire moors, beautiful country. but i can not really make my mind up what was the best area or country. they all are unique on their own.

we feel both very lucky we have seen a lot before it was walked over by tourism, we understand it, because in many beautiful places it is pretty hard to earn a living. when we look nowadays at videos of areas we been to, that are now so different, more cultivated.

we had more the raw format, with also lots of great people to. we never made much of a plan, more just go and look. and i always done that. when i could walk on my own by the age of 3 i just walked through the field, our house was just a new build pretty stand street with rows of house, but it took some years to build up the next one. but we also gone further with each year we aged.
but it was not that common, but the farmers did not mind much if you walked through a field to the river. we could also play in ruins in a part of the old city center, long been boarded off. i often joined up with my uncle who was a great poacher, another one learned us to fish, another one how to swim.

the difference was not so much your parents, more the adventure to find out your own boundaries, and i think we always kept doing that, but that is very different from the more arranged outings of today. most organised stuff already have set boundaries.
i have no idea how much others of my age group did what i did, i think less than i even expect. i hardly ever met up with class mates during my adventures, they did their own stuff.

i ended up, accidentally as a nature guide for many years, just spare time stuff, at the age of 14. the guide did not show up and i had a pippy longstocking moment, and it worked and never stopped, but i never did anything like preparing for such things, i just like to be surprised by nature myself. and my goal always was people learning to look for themselves, most people liked that well. and with lots of school classes too, and always trying to bring on a bit of an adventure. in my idea that is a need for all people. it gets harder because we are just with too many people on the same places a lot of time.

pippy is still one of my favorites in life.

once i was asked as a guide for a project with school children, we were told exactly what must happen, what must be told, and that follows for you with the extra finger pointing at me too. i just stood up and said well good luck. and walked out. nature has no format, so pretending it has is just silly.

and nature is simply everywhere, even in the cultivated space. and still full of surprises, like my city king fisher.

Scotland for me is the winner every time.

The west coast seascape and mountains attract so many species of birds and mammals, with the exception of humans if you're lucky.  The east coast, maybe not so majestic but still rich in wildlife and flora.

In days of old on one trip, we visited a prefabricated building showing film footage of the Battle of Culloden.  When leaving there was a violent storm brewing on the horizon.  Clouds of various colours shapes and sizes rapidly rolled in, changing the whole scenery, lightening flashed in every direction, thunder echoed across the mountains and it slashed down - horizontally.  I thought the world had come to an end.

The wildlife carried on as usual.

i think i already had fallen in love with ireland before we made it to scotland, and we also had travelled a lot in skandinavia and iceland. so we were quite spoiled. and ireland had hardly any midges.

but if i had to choose for a country to stay in, it would make france my number one, just because the food is so much better. and we had at a time pretty serious plans to emigrate to austria.

but all these countries and of course spain, and the countries east of germany too have lots of birds, but maybe for amount of birds per square km the netherlands still wins, it only gets hard to get to places that have no humans in sight.

but all countries have great places to watch birds. or just places of natural beauty. most would be better off without the eu subsidised roadworks, because that only brings more people in places they did not go before, maybe nice if you live around such places and have to travel for school, work or your groceries, but it does bring too much others in.

we drove the ring road on iceland before it was anything else as large stones and lava, they did pay it by themselves, when we started with our own opel cadet, we had send it a week before our flight by boat over, we saw a sign with 90 km per hour max. and asked ourselves what idiot have found that a great idea. we did 60 km an hour as the max. but we travelled with a little bit too much speed, so with still a week to go, we got back on that same bit of road and had to look out to not drive over 90 km per hours.

somewhere in the eastern parts we found a traffic counting guy, we were the first car passing in 2 days. i think you cannot have that same experiences nowadays.

same with ireland, we have seen things that maybe were not that nice for the people, but it was often 50 years back in time. but we people we met underway often simply told best places to watch birds. usually being on your own out there. now it is on a map and that makes it very different.

the best wild landscapes often do not have that many birds. often they have a more special kind. coastal areas are usually the better area for bird watching. for us it was never the birds only, just a good mix of nature, animals of all kinds, plants and meeting new people. some culture too, more the old stuff as the modern kind. not too much planning.

the strange thing was even travelling with a pretty young car and later a van, they had a habit of breaking down in the strangest places, but usually that lead to more chances to see things, including birds. but also meeting great people. like the time we found a old garbage pit in hungary with over a 100 bee eaters, and a van that would not start again, no problem, the first with a very old trabant stopped and with hand and feet language they offered help, well to get the thing repaired we had to get back to austria in a opel garage, and that was over 500 km away still, no problem, each day there was simply another trabant owner willingly to keeps us going. but all knew great places to go to look at more special birds. all smaller marsh lands that could not be found on the maps.

the isle of skye was another one, a broken exhaust pipe, we were still quite some miles from portree on quite a rough stretch of coastal road, and i am the the dedicated car problem solver, so i put the car up with a large brick of stone, and shoved under it to look what was wrong and bind the two part to the underside of the car to make it to a garage, an pretty old islander stopped and started a conversation in island scottish i think, he could only see my feet, so it was a lot of well my laddy, and i think i delivered him quite a shock when i wiggled back from under the car and got recognised as a lassie, it took some time to fully grab he did not meant a dog. still after he got back to a normal colour he knew a small path to a bit of a cliff side with birds. i was glad that after he found out i was dutch , that he had also some english.

i have such stories from ireland and norway and austria too, in france you would not easily get such experiences, because they have garages everywhere. but broken cars are great to meet nice people who knew the area very well, and most already think you had bad luck enough already, so do not mind to give you a special experience too.

the city-kingfisher has not shown up today, so we are talking if we maybe must make a bit bigger pond with little fish in it, but as we just got news from next door they bought a new cat, we growing in the idea of better not.

today one of the blackbirds, a male born this summer was mad as hell on a coal tit. all afternoon he been hunting on it.

a bit as the turtle doves, no idea who got it in its mind these are love birds, because that only works if you have one settled pair, and i have at least 8 pairs, and still a few young ones from this summer. not that much, the jays covered that, not a very bad thing, better as too many of a kind.

and as jays are also great in catching snails, we hardly had that as a problem this summer. still even snails learn quickly, other years they eat if i forgot to keep the dishes under the pots full of sweet peppers everything in one night, now they found out to wait a bit and just make a little hole in the sweet peppers itself and just creep in them. after the first ended up sliced in my kitchen, i know inspect them extra before getting a knife in them.

and the goldfinches are back again, they have their nest in some small trees some houses down the back ally, but the always seems to take a bit of a holiday on some crops. the sparrows usually do that too, but this is the first autumn they simply kept around. many of them take wintertime to stay in a dairy stable, and hardly get out during the days. until 2 years ago the numbers always got down to even 6 of them, but when i kept on feeding seeds during summer the populations has grown up to 30 again.

i think that the reason why the sparrows got in decline is because of the use of the place mat and less people staying at home instead of 3 times daily some crumbs in each garden, now it is nothing. simply using some wild bird feed daily seems to make a huge difference. and they are cozy to have around.

I've never been to Ireland.

It was Scotland that always gave the variety of birds and mammals, I'm priveleged to have seen so many different species during my trips. Particularly when crossing over by dinghy to bird sanctuaries governed by the RSPB.

Usually just one person living on the island/s watching over the wildlife and ferrying people like me to and fro. Memories that will never leave me.

ireland was great, the first year somewhere in the eighties, i think that must have been 81, because our queen dit a visit after us, not by our suggestion of course, but after that ireland became much more popular.

we ended up on a beautiful camping ground, very green short grass, with white picket fences and flowers everywhere, and we were the only guest, around 4 o 'clock we just had set up our tenth and took a seat, instead of tea the weather advised a slosh of irish wiskey in the cup, without the tea of course, tullamore dew is simply good enough on its own. and we had the honour to meet up with mister paddy and mister o'leary, while we simply blew out 'tea', they were so polite not to suggest we had a good choice of tea, both together very good story tellers.mister o'leary was in his eighties and lived a bit uphill, both had a must see for us, a dolmen, i never understood how they named it, we solved by going and just look, we were allowed to walk through the fields of mr. o'leary.

they had build it themselves with the guys who build the railroad that never got further as its foundation. well it loked quite original, but we passed the house of mister o'leary, i must have still a lot of diafilms of it, when people tell you they live in a tiny house, he would beat them easily, it was a very small house, with with red tiled roof, but at the front it had a door, one small window on the side, and the other half was the stable for his grey welsh pony mare, all in all it was no more than 2 meter width and 6 meters long. his washing was just hang out to dry in the may thorn next to the stream.

there was no path at all, no organisation that put out signs at all, but we made easily 20 km up and down without seeing anybody at all.
the next day both came back with an old but large book, that railroad that never came was started around 1930. they had black and withe pictures from it. and as i had bought a fresh bottle we shared. we already learned on other travels that it works best if you use two bottles, because many have the habit to go home when the bottle got empty, by keeping one bottle about a quarter full, it keeps you from a lot of headaches the next day. and you do not get in trouble if such figures end up to still have a wife or daughter.

i once made that mistake the other way round in czechia some years later, when the border got open there, i did go to the reception to register our stay and the old guy who owned the place was an old army man, who spoke fluent german, and after 2 minutes he decided it was time to open up a bottle home brewed rum, in lucky me small glass tea cups, 4 hours later cooking was quite an adventure, at least i do keep my memory even after tea cups of heavy rum, but the headaches were not very nice the next day during a great trail. and did play havoc with your reaction time too. but still 4 hours for one of the forgotten guys who got the germans out of my country, is not spoiled of course. he had lots of pictures from the many tours he had done. we have changed for many years christmas cards and i would send him dutch cacao in a box, he remembered only the one with the nurse on it, but i usually offered only the family brand.

but such great people know their countryside usually very well, or knew of others who can show you some very great sites to spot a bit of nature.