Birds – wanderwarbler

June 16, 2019June 17, 2019

Austria: La Ronde

It’s this time of the year again: The bee-eaters, those agile, gregarious birds, have returned from South Africa and set up shop at Lake Neusiedl. By means of their sharp bills they dig their burrows up to two meters into the vertical sand stone, completely ignoring the burrows they had carved out the previous year. It’s in their nature to build a new home each June.

It’s not in their nature to find new partner, though. Bee-eaters mate for life. Their romantic fidelity has inspired poets and biologists alike. Albeit, their sex lives aren’t as straight forward as it may seem. Both husband and wife like to engage in extra-marital affairs to further their own offspring’s chances of survival, turning the colony into a stage for a veritable Ronde à la Schnitzler.

Courtship follows an elaborate protocol. The groom presents the bride with a present – a bee or a dragonfly or even a butterfly, the avian equivalent to a bouquet of roses. After a little cuddling, the female will assume a receptive posture, after which the consummation of marriage will take place. Then both will joyfully take to the skies. Love is in the air!

However, monogamy is often limited to “social monogamy” – the shared raising of the hatchlings. Copulation often happens in the hidden, sometimes it’s forced, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.

A couple usually enlists other birds as babysitters, most preferably their own children. If the latter however wish to start their own family, the old couple will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent them from mating. The daughter in turn will sneak out in the wee hours of the day to find herself a secret lover.

In general, as recent studies have shown, a lot of extra-marital sex in the world of birds is in fact instigated by females. Married males will not shy away from a little tete-a-tete, especially if they don’t have to take care of the hatchlings later. On a darker note: bachelors who haven’t managed to impress a female will resort to drastic measures to get their DNA spread: coercion and rape.

Comes September, the bee eaters will head South again. Many more of them.

The Austrian doctor and novelist Arthur Schnitzler published his novel “La Ronde” (Der Reigen) in 1879, causing a scandal for its frank description of sexuality. Or rather: it caused a riot. Not surprisingly, the book was banned. Then became a best seller. The Fifty Shades of Grey of its time. Passion is more colorful at Lake Neusiedl.

October 1, 2018October 10, 2018

Montenegro: The Price of Salt

When by September the last tourists have left and the little Adriatic republic of Montenegro has fallen into peaceful slumber again, another kind of yearly visitor arrives. Thousands of migrating birds on their way to the African sun stop-over at the country’s lakes and rocky shores, but most importantly at the Ulcinj Saltpans, a lagoon at Montenegro’s Southern tip, bordering Albania.

Salt pans are an ideal nesting and resting spot for birds. They offer a unique salty fauna, plus amphibians and reptiles, to their avian guests: a win-win situation for local economy and ecology; or, in other words: the ideal cohabitation of humans and birds. For without the pumps and machines, not enough salt water would reach the lagoon and therefore the bird habitat.

Samphire – the salty flower of the saltpans – has risen to fame since Jamie Oliver recently introduced it into his modern cuisine.

The Ulcinj salt pans, created in 1934 for salt production, have since attracted millions of birds. Today, however the pumps stand still. The dried pans are left in dire need to be flooded with sea water, but the machines and salt-factories dilapidated and forgotten, a but a surreal setting for the flamingos, the Dalmatian Pelicans, spoonbills and many other waders – whose future is as uncertain as that of the salt factory.

Problems began when the salt pans were sold to a private company with the permission to turn the land into a hotel and golf resort. However, following protests by wildlife NGOs, the young state of Montenegro declared the saltpans an environmentally protected area in 2012, thereby thwarting any hotel plans. As a result, the private owner declared bankruptcy in 2013, stopped salt production, and sued the young Republic of Montenegro for breach of contract. A coincidence or probably not, the saltpans have also fallen prey to various acts of vandalism, pumps and flamingo nests were destroyed, water ways clogged.

While the situation still seems unclear today, as bankruptcy proceedings are apparently not settled, the saltpans have been turned into an open-air museum for birding tourists in 2014 – with three hides and educational signs at the path surrounding the pan. Not unlike the factories, though, the signs stand forgotten and bleached by the Mediterranean sun.

But there is hope. Nature and birds are resilient, and despite their run down state, the pans dazzle the visitor’s eyes with a sparkling display of colors and birds. Within the past years, awareness among the locals has risen, and with the support of various NGOs, efforts have taken place to reinstall salt production.

The price of salt doesn’t seem so high in Montenegro. For salt comes with the birds, which makes it all the more worth it.

September 18, 2018September 18, 2018

Montenegro: Paradise (Almost) Lost at Lake Skadar

Millions of years ago, tectonic shifts cut off a portion of the Adriatic sea and formed a basin, later named Skadar by the Montenegrinians, or Shkodar by the Albanians, who nowadays share this charming lake, one of the largest in Europe, with no one but a bunch of birds.

While the birds have nested in the high reeds and floating carpets of sea lilies ever since, humans only settled at the lake’s shores about a thousand years ago – and engaged in battle right away: the Slavs against the Turks, the Montenegrins against the Ottomans, back and forth through times and ages, Tito’s partisans even sank a steamboat in the lake, while the storks and herons, the egrets and ibises, kingfishers, turns, stilts, dived and sailed through waves and skies.

Pygmy cormorants rise with the morning sun.

Today, in times of peace and with the help of the EU, which invests heavily in Montenegro, the lake is of dreamy tranquility and breathtaking wilderness, glittering in the Mediterranean sun. For birders it is nothing short of a paradise.

Lake Skadar was declared a National Park in 1983 and two globally endangered species, the Dalmatian Pelican and the Pygmy Cormorant, are found at the lake in abundance.

Unlike humans, the Pelicans and Cormorants have teamed up, breading in vicinity and sharing the chores of hunting and babysitting. While the regal, imposing pelicans are surprisingly elegant gliders, the cormorants excel at fishing, diving meters deep into the waters and bringing with them fish too large for themselves to swallow, but just the right size for the big beaked pelicans.

Lake Skadar could be a paradise for the birds – if it weren’t for the humans. Despite its status as a natural park, Lake Skadar has a litter problem, the occasional plastic bottle drifting like flotsam in the undulating waves, getting caught in the reeds, and clogging the freshwater springs that feed the lake.

a channel through the water lilies for the fishing boat

But worst are the left over fishing nets. Once expensive and made of biodegradable fabric, they are nowadays made of plastic and extremely cheap, to the effect that fishermen don’t bother to retrieve them but leave them swaying in the water .

For the cormorants, those masterful divers, they are a deathly trap, in which they get entangled and drown. Their dead bodies can be seen floating with the empty canisters, tins and beer bottles. But if the cormorants can’t dive up the fish, not only the pelicans will go hungry.

May 20, 2018July 30, 2018

Austria: Family Business

What a frenzy in the air! With flying colors, the gregarious bee-eaters have returned from their Southern African winter domiciles and are busy setting up shop in Austria. Using their beaks for digging and legs for kicking, they carve tunnels of up to two meter length in the soft sandstone near lake Neusiedl.

A bee-eater leaving home for the hunt. The bigger holes are bird’s nesting chambers, the smaller ones bees’. What neighborhood…

Bee-eaters are fast flyers. Spotting their insect prey from a distance of up to 60m they shoot like bullets through the air for the kill. Bees might be their preferred diet, but bee-eaters will do with any flying insect. They will however never eat from the floor. They have manners after all. They are social creatures.

The divorce rate among bee-eaters is low. Once a bee-eater found their mate, they will most likely stay together for years to come. Traditionally courtship ends with the presentation of a gift – not surprisingly a bee, or even a dragonfly – and then the bride leaves her family to move in with her in-laws. This is when all the trouble begins.

Prey is presented as a gift – or robbed- some individuals speialize in kleptoparasitism.

In-laws rarely have an interest in grandchildren. Rather, they want to have more children themselves and – since hunting is so demanding a business – they are in need of baby sitters, not grandkids. The in-laws will harass the newly weds and keep them from procreating mainly by blocking them access to their nesting chamber. To keep the peace, the young couple often obeys, delaying their own egg-laying for a few years.

The bride however, will feel short-changed. She left her own family for the groom after all. So she comes up with a scheme: She sneaks in with a completely different family, trespassing territory lines, and demands intercourse with a male. Upon return, she secretly lays her own eggs into her mother-in-law’s nesting chamber. She’s not scrupulous – without a flinch she will discard of already laid eggs. Yet, she must time her actions well – if her off-spring hatches too early or too late, they are doomed as well. The mother in law will know no mercy. Family – can’t choose them.

October 10, 2017

Rome: Watching the Sky

In ancient Rome, augury was the major kind of divination. This included watching the sky, thunder and lightning, but most importantly the auspices, watching the birds. Eagles and vultures were Jupiter’s most important messengers.

Nothing was decided without consulting an augur, a priest who could interpret the flight, the song and dance of birds. Most notoriously, Romulus and Remus settled their dispute on where to found the city of Rome by an augury. Romulus, of course, had the better auspices. He spotted more vultures than his brother Remus, which also granted the former the right to fratricide.

The she-wolf that raised Remus and Romulus against a purple, thunderous Roman sky on the Capitoline Hill, where Romulus founded Rome.

The auspices was restricted to certain species, which are hard to come across in the busy city nowadays. Like in any other coastal city, giant gulls and pigeons seem to outnumber the rest of Rome’s avian population.

A giant gull over-looking his city from the Palletino, the power center of ancient Rome.

Since the Roman Empire extended over a vast part of Northern Africa, tropical birds were imported as sought-after pets. Emperor Nero famously owned an African Gray parrot, Pontius Pilatus’ wife, Claudia, kept lovebirds in a cage, who looked not unlike the Monaco Parakeet.

A Parrocco Monaco sneaking from behind a tree in the beautiful Borghese gardens.

Today’s most flamboyant Roman bird, the gregarious Monaco Parakeet, only arrived in Rome in the early 1970ies. The striking, green parrots have since seamlessly integrated into Italian lifestyle, not causing any harm to local Wildlife, according to the Italian Wildlife Fund. These bright flying jewels color the ancient buildings, which, when built, where not as marble-white, but painted in manifold colors.

Pigeons at the Tiber at sunset, Ponte Vittorio Emanuele in the back.

September 21, 2017September 21, 2017

Vienna: The Caged Birds Fly

Opened in 1752, the zoo of Vienna is the oldest in the world. Mary Theresa of Austria had the zoo installed into the baroque gardens of her imperial summer residence of Schönbrunn, back then still in the outskirts of Vienna. Until 1778 only members of the royal family could wander among the cages to marvel at the elephants, giraffes, camels, bears, wolfs and exotic birds.

Today one of Vienna’s major tourist attractions, Schönbrunn with its zoological, botanical and baroque gardens as well as a lavishly decorated golden interior, was styled after Versaille in Paris. Mary Theresa sought the alliance of the Bourbon Empire to fortify her empire against her archfiend Frederick II of Prussia. On her court, French was spoken. To eternally strengthen the relationship between Austria and France, she further sent her youngest daughter, Maria Antonia, to marry the future king Louis XVI – against the teenager’s wish. However, the French empire did not last as long as the Austro Hungarian monarchy. As Queen Marie Antoinette, Maria Antonia was beheaded during the French Revolution of 1791.

At Schönbrunn castle, six year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played for Mary Theresa. Little Mozart did not have to go to school as other children his age had to: As citizen of the independent state of Salzburg and therefore no Austrian, obligatory schooling did not apply to him.

Mary Theresa, despite her well-groomed image as the warm-hearted mother to the peoples of her multinational empire, was an absolute and strict ruler, and it was only her successor, her son Joseph II, who talked her into a slightly more liberal thinking and therefore reforms, such as opening the zoo to the public. In fact, the citizens of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy might have seen life in catholic, narrow-minded Austria comparable to living in the cages of the zoo. Definitely her own children did.

An ardent catholic – the Roman Catholic Church is still state church in Austria – she believed her power to be god given. Mary Theresa controlled her own children the way she controlled her subjects: with an iron fist. She introduced compulsory schooling for all children between six and twelve. Other faiths than the Roman Catholic were not tolerated in her empire: Jews as well as Christians of protestant faith were dispelled from the country – as long as they did not weigh in when it came to financing her wars against Frederick II. Wars she kept loosing.

Today, 300 years after Mary Theresa, the Zoo attracts two million visitors per year. In its more than 250 years of existence, it has gone a long way from its first exhibitions in baroque cages and adorned follies. Waldrapps, or hermit ibis, a central European bird species that went extinct in the 18th century, was bred anew at Schönbrunn Zoo. A complex re-introduction program which involved glider planes taught the birds, born in captivity, to fly long distance and find their migratory routs to Tuscanny, Italy, where their free ancestors spent their winters. The population of these striking birds is still small – they are among the rarest birds worldwide. Yet they are alive and free again – ironically thanks to Mary Theresa’s Zoo.

Every body is beautiful. A Waldrapp at the zoo, soon to be released.

July 19, 2017July 20, 2017

Fertö/Lake Neusiedl: The Northern Breeding Grounds

There are no mountains in Austria’s most Eastern province, Burgenland. The “Land of Castles”, as its name is literally translated, is surprisingly flat. Here, the Puszta, the great Hungarian plane, spills into alpine Austria from the East. In fact, until 1922, Burgenland was part of Hungary. In exchange, Lake Neusiedl, the shallow lake, spills into Hungary, where it’s called Fertö.

In winter, the Siberian cold drifts into the flat land and turns it grey, cold and numb. In summer though, the Alpine mountains shelter the plane from the Western rains. From May to September it is hot and sunny, and the salty soil vibrant with flowers, with butterflies, dragonflies and bees.

A red-backed shrike blends in with field flowers.

Many migratory birds have chosen this corner of the world as their Northern breeding grounds. Lake Neusiedl is to a great extent a protected national park that features 360 species of birds: in short, a birder’s paradise. Thanks to the EU and the Schengen agreement visitors can drive, hike or cycle around the lake and its pittoresque scenery of reeds, fields and meadows without once flashing their passport.

A lapwing struts through a meadow in Burgenland. Lapwings hatch on the wet soil close to the lake Neusiedl.

By April the first birds arrive from Africa – those lucky ones that made the ten thousand kilometre-long, hazardous passage over the dire Sahara, over the bird-traps of Malta and Cyprus, and finally the Bosphorus. In fact, the number of migratory birds is on a steady decline. Biologists blame climate change, the loss of feeding grounds and the barbaric lime-stick hunting of songbirds that is sadly on the rise in Mediterranean countries. Bee-eaters are regarded delicatessen.

Bee eaters perch on branches, scanning the air for food: they eat any winged insect, not only bees.

The Bee Eaters are colorful, gregarious birds that shoot through the sky like bullets when chasing insects. They are most proficient hunters of not only, but most notoriously bees.

A bee eater shoots like a bullet when hunting.

While the bee-eaters were traditionally killed by bee-keepers and their eggs destroyed, National Park Neusiedlersee even maintains their breeding rocks, soft limestones in which they dig holes up to half a metre deep with their beaks.

The elegant Great White Egret sashays through the shallow water.

With a maximum depth of 1.5m, Lake Neusiedl offers ideal conditions for wading birds like herons, avocets, stilts and egrets. In the 19th century, the elegant Great White Egret was close to extinction as the bird’s flamboyant feathers were used by hatters to adorn ladies’ hats. However, the Audubon Society in the US, which was founded in order to prevent the egrets from vanishing from the planet, led a successful campaign that led to the abolishing of the feather trade. Two of the society’s members even lost their lives in this fight for the egrets. Since the trade of feathers was declared illegal in most of the Western world, their population has recovered, yet herons and egrets are highly susceptible to environmental changes and suffer from loss of habitat.

Songbirds are tiny, but their kaleidoscopic feathers color the Eastern skies and meadows like paint boxes. The Yellow Wagtail, thanks to its bright, warm color, has traditionally been associated with the sun. The little bird is said to have inspired the Ancient Greeks to their idea of the Phoenix, the bird that burns to ash and resurrects. True or not, the Yellow Wagtail, just like the storks, the geese and the rest of the migratory birds, abandons this land in September, and leaves it to die the cold death of winter, just to return in Spring, and kiss the still land awake with color and birdsong.

Geese crossing the evening sky on their celestial high way.

June 7, 2017June 16, 2017

Crossing the Bosphorus

Istanbul straddles two continents. The city is divided by the Strait of Bosphorus, which connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea, but separates Europe from Asia. The Istanbulites have built three bridges from stone, and many more through their music and poetry.

I woke up one morning.
The sun came up in me.
I turned into birds and leaves
which glittered in the springtime breeze.
I turned into birds and leaves.
My arms and legs were rioting.
I turned into birds and leaves,
birds
and leaves.

For migratory birds, the Bosphorus is the most important route on their way to their Northern breeding grounds. An estimated million of birds cross the Bosphorus annually. Big-winged soaring birds, like storks and predatory birds, depending on thermal convection and therefore avoiding sea crossings, have turned the city into a birding hot spot, benefiting from Turkey’s scenery of high mountains, marshlands and and humid forests. Camlika Hill, a favorite birding view point on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, was during the Ottoman empire a training ground for birds of prey, like falcons and hawks.

I listen to Istanbul, my eyes closed:
Now the birds are passing
In high clamoring flocks,
Nets are pulled in at the fisheries,
A woman’s feet graze the water;
I listen to Istanbul, my eyes closed.

Migration starts with a promise to return. Yet, many birds do not survive the trip to the distant shores. Feeding grounds are dwindling. And many more dangers lurk on their way: The stork was deemed holy by the Ancient Greeks – who punished the killing of a stork with death penalty – and the followers of Islam – they likened its migration to their pilgrimage to Mecca. It is considered a delicacy in Egypt, where it is trapped with nets and limesticks, and killed by the thousands. Little migratory songbirds, who feature on Mediterranean menus as pulenta a osei (Polenta with little birds) in Italy or ambelopoulia in Malta, are illegally trapped and hunted all over the Mediterranean.
Formerly common birds are on the verge of extinction.

When you’re travelling,
the stars speak to you.
What they say
is often sad.