Bialowieza forest

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This is a video about European bison in Poland. Recently, for the first time, two European bison calves were born in a Dutch nature reserve.

17 May 2009.

Like yesterday, early this morning we went to Bialowieza national park.

Still in the village, a great tit, a starling, and a greenfinch in a coniferous tree.

And a thrush nightingale singing.

In the palace park, the song of a wood warbler.

Also, cuckoo sounds.

We left the palace park through a path crossing a clearing.

A blackbird. Corncrake sound. The first one of many Burgundy snails. A yellowhammer singing.

This is a video of a Polish great spotted woodpecker hammering away on a steel pole.

Just before the strict reserve entrance gate, a great spotted woodpecker, hammering away on an English oak.

Water avens flowering.

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.

Important tree species in the forest are English oak, small-leaved lime, and common hornbeam. Also elms, Norway maple, and ash. Hawfinches here like to eat ash fruits.

Among the many plants of the undergrowth: woodruff, and Solomon’s seal.

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.

Many fungi. A blackbird singing.

Ramsons flowering.

A red-breasted flycatcher singing.

Beard lichen growing on a Thymelaeaceaen shrub.

Herb Paris flowering.

Then, a middle spotted woodpecker and a three-toed woodpecker, together on the same tree.

A sulphur shelf fungus.

Then, a white-backed woodpecker, low on a big tree. Like the three-toed woodpecker, this species indicates healthy big forest.

Cardamine bulbifera flowers.

A Fomitopsis pinicola fungus on a fallen small-leaved lime tree.

A parasitical plant, toothwort.

As we pass the entrance gate, now exit gate, a yellowhammer singing on a tree.

A whinchat on the field, flying from grass stem to grass stem.

Middle spotted woodpecker in the Netherlands: here.