Know your vogels

Birding in the Netherlands, Pt. 1

Welcome to Owl My Children, a monthly newsletter where I recount my exciting bird moments from the past (two) month(s) and share some photos from my first ever trip across the Atlantic.

How long is it acceptable to use jet lag as an excuse for not doing things? Michael and I went to the Netherlands at the end of July, and I still feel like I haven’t caught up on sleep. After that trip, I also started a new job as a grant writer, so the last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. I can’t believe it’s already September!

I took several thousand bird photos while in the Netherlands, so the thought of putting this newsletter together—and choosing only six (!!!) photos, as Substack demands—has been intimidating, to say the least. So, fair warning: I’m probably going to talk about Dutch birds for at least two newsletters. I’m not sorry about it.

Baby’s first European vacation

Before this trip, I had never been to Europe. In fact, the only time I’d ever left the country was to go to Mexico for lunch when I was visiting my Aunt Polly and Uncle Bob in Arizona. For me, one of the biggest barriers to a trip abroad is that I don’t know how to plan trips, and neither does Michael. We don’t get any joy from making itineraries or booking plane tickets, and we don’t like spending money.

But there is one thing I like to plan for: birding.

A month before our trip, I started looking up eBird hotspots and parks. Then I realized that Dutch birders don’t use eBird very much. Instead of eBird, a lot of people in the Netherlands seemed to use the Dutch version of Observation.org, so I used that site, as well as the eBird lists of a few faithful Dutch eBirders, to figure out where I wanted to go.

Next I made a Google doc of all the possible bird species I might see, then started studying them by comparing them to US birds. This is when I realized that a lot of the birds in the Netherlands are basically the same as birds in the US, with slight, only sometimes-observable differences.

Same bird? Nope! I took the top photo of a Eurasian moorhen in Amsterdam. The bottom photo is a common gallinule in South Carolina. These used to be considered the same species, but in 2011 they were determined to be two distinct species because they have different vocalizations, bills, and forehead shields. (Photos by me)

A quick lesson about bird origins

Why do birds in Europe and birds in the US look so similar? The short answer is speciation, defined as “the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.” This happens when a group of the same species start out together in the same place but then get separated and, over time, develop different characteristics.

We could also talk about Pangaea.

The leading theory is that birds (which probably evolved from dinosaurs) started out on Pangaea during the Jurassic period. Then, somewhere between 200 and 175 million years ago, Pangaea began to drift apart. Each hunk of Pangaea eventually became a continent that had unique climates and geography. Birds started evolving ~150-160 million years ago, and they adapted to their new habitats in different ways. Eventually, new genetic strains (new species!) were formed. (This is a gross oversimplification, of course. I’m not a scientist. Here is a helpful video from the Cornell Lab explaining speciation in birds.)

Meeting the Dutch relatives

Our trip to the Netherlands was only a week long, and we had a lot to do. The primary reason for our trip was that Michael needed to go to a cognitive science conference in Rotterdam. This was great news for us, because Michael’s brother’s family lives in Amsterdam, and we’d been wanting to visit them. The train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam only takes about an hour.

Last time Michael had a conference abroad, I didn’t go with him. Instead, I stayed behind in Madison and sprained my ankle in the middle of a very remote prairie. This time, I knew I would be silly not to go, especially with the added motivation of getting to meet my two-year-old twin nephews.

I also knew that birding wasn’t high up on our list of priorities, so I tried to keep my expectations low. The nice thing about birding in a new country is that almost every bird is a lifer. Even walking down a busy Amsterdam street might result in a new bird for my life list. So I tried to be chill. I enjoyed spending time with family and seeing the sights without lugging around my gigantic camera.

But don’t worry, I did plenty of camera-lugging, too.

Dutch gulls

The most common vogel (bird) we saw in Amsterdam was the black-headed gull, followed closely by lesser black-backed gulls. Gulls are everywhere in this city. At first this made me uncomfortable, because gulls are my worst group of birds when it comes to identification. They have different plumages at different ages and throughout the year, and all the species look similar to the untrained (or even partially trained) eye. But luckily, these two types of gulls are fairly distinct if they’re in breeding plumage, so I got used to them as the week went on. They were always scuffling over trash or pooping on prominent statues. (I took some funny photos of this in Vondelpark.)

Dutch coots

After gulls, the most common bird we saw was the Eurasian coot, or maybe the Eurasian moorhen. Both could be found at pretty much every pond, canal, or puddle we encountered. July was a great time to see both species, because many of them were raising their young.

Whether you’re in the US or Europe, coot babies are super ugly, so ugly that, while I was watching the coot family below, a passerby noticed there was a baby bird and pointed it out to her friend, and they both started to say, “Awww—” but then cut themselves off, wrinkled their noses, and walked quickly away.

Top photo: Eurasian coot with chick. Bottom photo: American coot with chicks. (Photos by me)

Dutch herons

Other common city sightings included common wood-pigeons (the fancy European version of a mourning dove); Eurasian wrens (basically the same as a house wren); and gray herons, which look like great blue herons. (One big difference, according to the internet: great blue herons have “chestnut thighs.”)

While I was walking through Het Park in Rotterdam, I saw so many gray herons that I thought they must all be in town for a heron convention. Then I found a heron rookery in the corner of the park. That made more sense than a heron convention.

A nice lady approached me while I was sitting in the park and started talking to me excitedly in Dutch. I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch.” And she switched to English and said, “Oh, do you speak English?”

After that was out of the way, she went on to tell me about an amazing bird she’d seen in the park. “It’s a very famous bird, very special, I don’t know the name,” she said. “It sits very, very still, and when a fish comes along, CHOMP!” She made a crocodile-chomp motion with her hands. I told her I would love to see the bird, so she led the way down a path and toward the pond, then pointed out the lovely gray heron pictured in the top photo below. Even though I had seen many gray herons already that day, this was, indeed, a special heron. Look how pretty.

Top: Gray heron in Rotterdam. Bottom: Great blue heron in South Carolina. (Photos by me)

Dutch (er, Egyptian) geese

Also common in Dutch parks, but less familiar-looking, were Egyptian geese. This was one of the birds Michael saw when he went to Germany for that last conference, and he was really excited to show them to me. They’re really cool! But I had trouble comparing them to any birds I knew in the US. They didn’t look like any geese I’m familiar with.

Even the Cornell Lab thinks Egyptian geese are “odd.” They say, “Despite its name, this bird is more like a large duck than a typical goose.” Egyptian geese are in the Anatidae family, which includes ducks, geese, and swans.

Top: Family of extremely cute Egyptian geese. Not very similar to the Canada geese in the bottom photo. Another key difference: the Egyptian geese did not try to attack me. Very demure, unlike the geese in the bottom photo. (Photos by me)

Dutch blackbirds

One bird that really excited me was the Eurasian blackbird. I frequently saw them in my brother-in-law’s backyard and also got to hear their ethereal fairy songs. You would think that a “blackbird” in Europe would be related to our US blackbirds, like the red-winged blackbird. But you’d be wrong!

The Eurasian blackbird is a thrush. Its scientific name is turdus merula. Do you know any other turdus birds?

If you said the American robin, you’re correct! The American robin’s scientific name is turdus migratorius. American robins and Eurasian blackbirds are in the same family. When I saw a Eurasian blackbird, I was absolutely delighted by the fact that it looked like an American robin dipped in ink.

Red-winged blackbirds, on the other hand, are icterids, which is a family of blackbirds in the New World (meaning they are primarily in the Americas).

To make things even more complicated, European robins are not in the same family as American robins or Eurasian blackbirds. They’re not even close. They are considered an Old World flycatcher, and we have nothing comparable in the Lower 48 (though two Old World flycatchers can be seen in Alaska). Michael and I were lucky to see several European robin chicks while in Amsterdam (see my photos here).

Top: the gorgeous Eurasian blackbird. Bottom left: A red-winged blackbird that is not shaped like a Eurasian blackbird, because they’re not closely related. Bottom right: An American robin, cousin of the Eurasian blackbird. (Photos by me)

Dutch chickadees

One of the great joys of being an American birder in Europe is that, in Europe, people call chickadee-like birds “tits.” In fact, these birds are called tits throughout the English-speaking world except in North America, where we are all too immature to use that word. (“Tit” was used in Old English to talk about small things, and these are small birds.) In North America, chickadees and titmice both fall into the tit family, Paridae.

There are three easy-to-find tits in the Netherlands, so you’re allowed to say you’re looking for the “tit trifecta.” You’re also allowed to say you’re hoping for some “great tits,” because a great tit is, in fact, a species of bird.

Michael and I saw the tit trifecta—a great tit, a Eurasian blue tit, and a long-tailed tit—when we went to Vondelpark. They were all in the same tree together. It was super cute. Sadly we did not manage to get a photo of all three, but we did get two, and now we have a goal for next time.

Top left: A great tit. Top right: Eurasian blue tit. Bottom: Black-capped chickadee collecting a spiderweb for its nest. (Photos by me)

Dutch Canada Geese?

I should mention that there were also a few birds in Europe that were THE EXACT SAME birds we have here, such as Canada geese and mallards. That’s because some bird species are cosmopolitan, which means that they can be found in all kinds of different habitats across the world. (The word cosmopolitan comes from the ancient Greek kosmopolites, meaning “citizen of the world”!) European starlings and house sparrows fall into that category as well—they’re both native to the Netherlands, so it was a fun experience seeing them in their natural habitat. Strangely, both of these species are in decline in the Netherlands, and we only saw each of them once during the entire trip.

Next time: Crezéepolder

While planning our trip to the Netherlands, I became fixated on one birding hotspot that I’d seen on eBird. It was in a remote area that didn’t seem accessible by public transportation, but it was absolutely HOPPING with shorebirds according to a list submitted by one reliable South Holland eBirder. The more I thought about this magical place, the more I couldn’t get it out of my head, even though our chances of getting out there seemed slim to none.

The place was called Crezéepolder. (Doesn’t it sound magical?? No?? Maybe it’s just me.)

A polder is a habitat defined by Merriam-Webster as “a tract of low land (as in the Netherlands) reclaimed from a body of water (such as the sea).” A significant portion of the Netherlands—at least a quarter, according to several online sources—is below sea level, and the polder system was developed to reclaim land from the sea and keep things from flooding. Polders usually involve big grassy fields or farmland and a system of dikes for drainage. Crezéepolder, which is southeast of Rotterdam, is on the Noord river. This river is a tidal river, so if you time your visit correctly, you can see Crezéepolder at low tide, when there are mudflats. Know who loves mudflats? BIRDS.

In the days leading up to our time in Rotterdam, I started imagining what it would be like to go to Crezéepolder. I made a list of the top birds I wanted to see there. I tried to figure out how to get there on public transportation, but the idea was overwhelming. Crezéepolder is so far outside of the normal touristy areas; what if no one spoke English? What if we got stranded without cell service?

This entire experience has made me realize that I am not a normal tourist. Prior to our trip, I didn’t think much about traditional sightseeing. We ended up not being able to see the Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh museum because we didn’t buy tickets in advance. We didn’t plan any extravagant dinners or take any walking tours. But I’m okay with that. Birding has changed the way I think about travel. It makes me seek out interesting habitats and greenspaces, and it allows me to get to know a place in a totally different way. It gives me something to look for, something to feel excited about, wherever I go. And every once in a while, I get to talk to a stranger about a cool bird, which is surprisingly nice.

By the grace of Michael, I made it to Crezéepolder. He stayed up late the night before his conference and planned it all out because I was too stressed/afraid of disappointment. We made the trip the next day. I’ll tell you more about it in my next newsletter, but here’s a spoiler: We Crezéed. We poldered. It was awesome.

You can see my complete album of Dutch birds here!

Fijne dag,

Holly