Emerlo Sky #2

Jackdaws (Corvus monedula) heading back their communal roosting spot for the evening. I saw this each night I was in Ermelo at around 8:30pm.

Linnaeus was here

Although it is not really his herb garden as Linnaeus was only in Harderwijk for only a week or so, to get his instant doctorate. What's more, the original plants where sold off after Napolean took control of the city and shut down the University. The two remaining specimens from that time are a ginkgo and plane tree. The plane tree has been heavily pollarded and looks not much more than an enormous stump.

The ginkgo however is very famous and is the second oldest in the Netherlands. It's estimated that it was planted in 1750, there is a legend that it was planted by Linnaeus but as he was in town in 1735 it's unlikely.

In an adjoining open space that also surrounds the De Horus, the old Botanical department building, there was anther huge plane tree whose stump was as large as the one in the renovated herb garden.

In the garden of Linnaeus

Bubble bees moving among the flowers in the herb garden of the former University of Harderwijk, filmed for new friends who I met recently at Imaging Nature II: Andre (NZ), Susan and Tarsh (WA). It was really nice to meet some artists and philosophers where interested in questioning science from within the discipline. I would characterise this thinking as an interest in acquiring and disseminating knowledges, that include scientific observation and categorisation, through the poetics of visual arts. (just to reduce an complicated argument to two sentences...)

Amsterdam bird encounters: Westerpark

Ok I have managed to keep this secret but I am actually quiet nervous about having physical contact with birds and am easily intimidated. As proof I offer you this ridiculous moment when I get chased by a Eurasian Coot (Fulica atra) in a Westerpark. I was too close to the pair and their chicks and the parent had given me some feather ruffling and wing beating warning so I was approaching with care as I could only run forward to get out.

 The pond was one of series in old gas tanks. I saw lots of coots with offspring but this was the only case where the parents gave me the warnings and charged me. 

Haico’s friend has an apartment two blocks from Westerpark so I went there quiet a few times, and even managed a jet-lagged evening jog. The top end of the park is your classic turn of the century park. However the much larger part is in the now disused gas works that includes several jogging paths and a large quiet wild area that is fenced in for dogs to be let off their leads. 

Like many city parks there was several people feeding the ducks in the classical park, But I  didn't see any feeders in the wilder section.

Emerlo sky

One of my enduring memories from the last time I was in the Netherlands was of sitting with Haico at his parents place watching the swifts (gierzwaluw: Apus apus, although Haico calls them swallows) circling and catching insects in the late evening. I filmed this between 9:30 and 10pm. The sky is not completely dark till after 11pm, and its bright daylight at 5am. It has been very strange having jet lag in with all this daylight.

The bird that greeted me to the Netherlands was a dark headed duck and some small Grebes- I am going to find a field guide and hopefully it will solve the mystery, if I got a good sighting. The first bird I recognised was a Blackbird: the bird that greeted me in Launceston.