Walking back to the village, a white stork flying.
A common tern.
A willow tit on the parking lot.
A serin singing from the top of a coniferous tree.
This is a video of a little spotted woodpecker; a bird which we did not see in Bialowieza though it lives there. However, we saw so many other bird and other species!
We arrive at a small zoo, with mammal species of Bialowieza.
A sign says that about 70% of wolves’ prey in Bialowieza nature reserve consists of red deer; 15% roe deer; 10% wild boar; and only a few % European bison and elk, both probably difficult for wolves to hunt. In the pristine forest, a different predator, the tawny owl, of course eats completely different prey.
Wolf numbers in Bialowieza reserve are supposed to be about twenty; lynx numbers 35-50.
There is also an enclosure for horses, where it is tried to breed back the extinct tarpan.
December 2010: An attempt to boost Poland’s falling Eurasian lynx population is now underway. HUNTING BAN: But still Poland’s lynx population is declining: here.
A CONSERVATIVE activist who appeared on Facebook wearing an Adolf Hitler moustache was expelled from the party on Saturday.
Daniel O’Docherty wore the moustache to a fancy dress party and subsequently posted a picture of himself in the guise on the social-networking website.
Alongside the picture, he posted offensive racist and sexist quotations.
Until earlier this month, he was chairman of the Birmingham University branch of Tory youth wing – Conservative Future.
Next to the picture on Facebook, there was a list entitled “My Favourite Quotes.”
Among them were what Tory sources described as “highly offensive” comments, including one that said: “I don’t hate everyone – I just hate women.”
Another quote was racist and was said to be offensive about poverty.
A red admiral butterfly, sitting on a coniferous tree.
This video says about itself:
The Blue Tits are ready to leave the nest! Shortly after this clip was filmed the first of the chicks left the nest closely followed by it’s brothers and sisters. Filmed using a colour nest box camera kit from http://www.gardenature.co.uk
In a hole in a deciduous tree, a blue tit nest with babies calling and adults bringing food.
A speckled wood butterfly.
Blue tits nesting in ‘acoustic art’ – Go and listen to the chicks in the Cotswolds: here.
The backlash against executive pay took a dramatic new turn this weekend when shareholder activists demanded that Royal Dutch Shell directors return their bonuses.
They also called for the resignation of Sir Peter Job, the former senior Reuters executive who chairs the energy multinational‘s remuneration committee.
The demands for bonuses to be given back echo the row over Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension, when MPs campaigned for the former RBS boss to return all or part of his £703,000-a-year award. He has refused to do so.
Shell was engulfed in controversy at its annual meeting in the Netherlands on Tuesday when 59% of shareholders opposed its remuneration report. Bonuses were paid to directors despite performance targets being missed.
The entrance of the strict reserve is a wooden gate, built in the 1920s by a southern Polish architect in the style of his native region, not Bialowieza. It is said to have been the inspiration for the entrance gate to the Jurassic Park in the film of that name.
The core of Bialowieza, the strict reserve, is primeval forest, unique now for the northern European lowlands.
The highest tree in Bialowieza is a Norway spruce, 54 meters high.
This morning, we do not see the big mammals which Bialowieza is famous for, like European bison, elk, wolf, and lynx (see also here). However, we do see a red squirrel, eating a Norway spruce cone.
A common treecreeper climbing up. Common in Britain and Poland, but not in continental western Europe.
This video is called INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE FOR THE ABOLITION OF FOREIGN MILITARY BASES QUITO & MANTA, ECUADOR MARCH 5 – 9, 2007. Since then, Manta base has been closed.
Reuters reports:
Ecuador says mining, oil must be in state hands
Sun May 24, 2009
QUITO – Ecuador‘s President Rafael Correa said on Saturday that key sectors of the economy, including oil and mines, must be in government hands.
During his first two years in office Correa has taken a tough stand with mining and oil companies, pushing for new contracts more favorable to the state, but has so far shied away from nationalizing any firms.
“We will fulfill the goal of having strategic sectors in government hands,” Correa said.
The U.S.-educated economist has recently said he will not nationalize foreign oil companies, but will push for more state control in the key industry via new contracts.
During a joint news conference with his Ecuadorean counterpart, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his drive to nationalize strategic sectors of his own country’s economy would continue.
US pulling out from Manta military base in Ecuador: here.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has vowed to deepen his “citizens’ revolution” as he was sworn in for a second term yesterday: here.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa delivered a lecture in London on Tuesday about the construction of 21st century socialism in his country which is countering the mainstream economic theories that have ravaged Latin America: here.
This part of the national park is called Palace park. In earlier centuries, here were the buildings from which princes hunted European bison and other animals in Bialowieza forest. In 1731, King Augustus II of Poland erected an obelisk style monument, recording the names of courtiers who had participated in the hunting and the animals which had been killed. The monument is still there today.
That cannot be said of the big palace which the czars of Russia had built here in the late nineteenth century. In the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries, the monarchs of Prussia, Austria, and Russia divided Poland among themselves. Bialowieza became part of the Russian empire. Polish foresters and other inhabitants of Bialowieza participated in nineteenth century anti czarist uprisings. The czar’s government had them deported to Siberia. The empire brought Russian foresters to Bialowieza in order to still have imperial hunts there. Today, about 2,000 people live in Bialowieza village, 3,000 live in the total region. The Polish autocephalous orthodox church is the biggest religious denomination, while in most of Poland it is the Roman Catholic church.
After Poland became independent after the First World War, the Polish government used the former czar’s palace to receive foreign guests on hunting visits, including Hermann Goering of nazi Germany, and Count Ciano, foreign secretary of Mussolini’s Italy. After the 1939 German occupation, Hitler’s army used the palace as military headquarters. When they had to retreat in 1944, they completely destroyed the building. Other, smaller, buildings are still standing.
In a tree near one of those buildings, today a nature education center, a collared flycatcher.
This is a video of a collared flycatcher in Sweden.
A chaffinch singing. Chiffchaff sound.
Pied wagtail. Robin.
On the edge of a sandbox, a greenfinch sits, eating dandelion seeds. Next to it sits a goldfinch.
As we go back to the village, a big white stork nest on a roof. One of many in Poland.
Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.
Most of the deaths are preventable, with basic obstetrical care. Tanzania, with roughly 13,000 deaths annually, has neither the best nor the worst record in Africa. …
Women in Africa have some of the world’s highest death rates in pregnancy and during childbirth. For each woman who dies, 20 others suffer from serious complications, according to the W.H.O. “Maternal deaths have remained stubbornly intractable” for two decades, Unicef reported last year. In 2000, the United Nations set a goal to reduce the deaths by 75 percent by 2015. It is a goal that few poor countries are expected to reach.
After Sierra Leone, Afghanistan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world with at least 1,600 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to UNFPA and the UN Children`s Fund (UNICEF).
By the way, Sierra Leone, the only country above Afghanistan on this tragic list, has also been on the receiving end of “humanitarian” Western military intervention.
Health researchers released a study on Tuesday which found that over two million babies and mothers die worldwide each year from childbirth complications, outnumbering child deaths from malaria and HIV/Aids: here.
Human rights activists staged a die-in at a busy London station on Saturday to highlight the number of women who die in childbirth around the world each year: here.
Just before the train reaches Weesp, two hares in a meadow.
A bit further, a tufted duck in a pond.
Later, the plane flies across Gooimeer lake and the fields of Flevoland.
The weather is sunny.
Later, over Germany, half of the sky gets cloudy.
Over Poland, the whole sky gets cloudy.
This is a video from a rookery in Kazakhstan.
12:25: outside Warsaw airport, a big rookery in a bush. Hundreds of rooks‘ nests. Recent research claims that rooks are as intelligent as chimpanzees in tool-making; see also here.
Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm: here.
Below the trees, wood pigeons and magpies on the ground.
We arrive in Bialowieza village, close to the famous national park of the same name. Stay tuned, as more entries on nature in Poland will appear on this blog.
