Don’t kill our national bird: Dutch object to new Lisbon airport

Wednesday, 19 Feb 2020 10:21 AM MYT

LISBON, Feb 19 — Thousands of people in the Netherlands have signed a petition objecting to the construction of an airport in Portugal that could threaten the black-tailed godwit, the Dutch national bird.

The new airport will be located on the south bank of Lisbon’s Tagus estuary, a nature reserve where the godwits, a threatened species, stop off on their way from Africa to the Netherlands.

“What is the point of protecting the godwits in the Netherlands if they are weakened or even die in Portugal?” says the petition, which has so far been signed by 26,000 people.

Portugal’s environment agency gave the green light for the airport in Montijo last month but said it must take steps to protect wildlife. The project has been heavily criticised by environmentalists at home and now abroad.

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Bird 'Arrested’' By Dutch Police On Shoplifting Charge And Twitter Can’t Keep Calm!

By Medha Sharma

10/02/19 AT 9:19 AM

Bird behind bars? Yes, you read it right. In an unusual incident, the Dutch police recently arrested a tiny parakeet bird and placed it in custody after its owner was arrested for shoplifting.

As the feathered creature was a partner-in-crime, sitting on the offender’s shoulder when he violated the law, the police had no option but to "arrest" the adorable birdie. The local police did not have a birdcage so the felon was put behind a regular cell with bread and water.

No wonder, the Dutch are known for treating everyone equally!

Sharing the photo of the green and yellow bird seated in a cell, the Police Utrecht Centrum jokingly wrote, “This bird sat on the shoulder of the thief we arrested for shoplifting. As we don’t have a bird cage, this bird had no other place to stay than in a cell.”

As it was a petty theft, the police released the felon soon, along with with his feathery friend who promptly hopped back on his shoulder as the duo walked out of the station.

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Marker Wadden, the manmade Dutch archipelago where wild birds reign supreme

A silted-up lake has been transformed into the latest addition to the map of the Netherlands – and an eco-haven teeming with wildlife

by Daniel Boffey

Sat 27 Apr 2019 20.30 BST

It takes about an hour on the ferry, across often choppy waters, to reach the newest bit of the Netherlands. For those sailing in from the port of Lelystad, the first sign of the Marker Wadden is a long finger of sand dunes designed to protect against flooding.

“You see the cormorants, the black birds?” asks the environmentalist Roel Posthoorn, pointing skywards.

Nine kilometres into the vast expanse of the Markermeer, the 700 sq km lake on Amsterdam’s easterly flank, lies a new Dutch archipelago. Five sprawling artificial islands, constructed from sucked-up and refashioned fine silt, clay and shells, offer a haven for plants, birds and other wildlife.

It’s a place for human pioneers, too. A small Robinson Crusoe-style hut stands next to a makeshift harbour for the volunteers who stay for week-long stretches as island wardens.

But here nature is king. Only the squawk and song of birds, the light clap of their wings, and the ebb and flow of water on the nearby sandy beach break the island’s silence. The Marker Wadden is an unprecedented feat of engineering and ecological restoration – made necessary because of human interventions, which have had disastrous consequences quite out of step with the Dutch reputation for water management.

Forty years ago, plans had been in the works to reclaim this vast lake for habitation, potentially turning the four-metre-deep Markermeer into Markerwaard, a spillover settlement for the booming Dutch capital. The lake’s shores were armoured up with heavy stones. The Houtribdijk, a dam with a road on top, was built, cutting the doomed lake off from waters to its east. But mounting costs and political hurly-burly got in the way of the reclamation, leaving behind only a huge, turbid basin of water – one of the largest lakes in Europe – muddied by swirling silt.

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Mystery as 20,000 dead or dying birds showing signs of starvation wash up in the Netherlands

The fish-eating guillemots have been washing up on beaches in the Netherlands

However the sudden bird deaths have not been reported in Belgium or Germany

Scientists are planning a mass autopsy in an effort to shed light on the mystery 

By AFP

PUBLISHED: 15:20, 6 February 2019 | UPDATED: 15:46, 6 February 2019

Dutch scientists have been left baffled after 20,000 dead or dying seabirds washed up on North Sea beaches in a phenomenon not seen for decades.

The fish-eating guillemots have been washing up between the northern Wadden Islands and southwestern Zeeland - all showing symptoms of severe starvation, a marine biologist said.

However the bird deaths are confined only to Dutch shores, with nothing reported in Belgium or Germany. 

Scientists are now planning a mass autopsy of hundreds of dead birds next week, hoping to shed more light on the mystery. 

'What's killing them is the million-dollar question,' Mardik Leopold, a maritime researcher for Wageningen University, told AFP.

'And we still don't know what the answer is. It's an alarming situation,' he added.

'The last time we saw high mortality rates like this was in the 1980s and 1990s.' 

High winds and stormy winter seas also could affect the birds' feeding patterns on herring and sprat as they become too fatigued to eat, Leopold said.

'But again, why are the deaths only localised to the Netherlands? Surely we're not the only place experiencing winter weather?' said Leopold.

Dutch media have raised the question of whether the deaths may be linked to a recent container spill, littering the Dutch and German coast lines with debris, including plastic toys, polystyrene, shoes and at least one bag with a dangerous powder identified by authorities as 'organic peroxide.'

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Take a gander: Dutch drivers warned over boom in geese population

Hundreds of geese spotted in grasslands around roads in east Netherlands, with some birds swooping into paths of vehicles

Daniel Boffey in Brussels

Wed 18 Apr 2018 15.09 BSTLast modified on Wed 18 Apr 2018 17.57 BST

The emergence of the Netherlands as the most popular place in Europe for geese has prompted an urgent call for Dutch drivers to watch out for hundreds of birds breeding on the grassy junctions and motorways verges.

More than 500,000 geese are in the country in the warmer months, and 2.5 million overwinter there, amounting to a 95% increase on the numbers counted in the 1960s.

The Netherlands’ intensive farming and temperate climate make it the best country for geese in Europe, according to the Sovon Dutch centre for field ornithology, the organisation responsible for surveying bird populations.

The population boom, however, is not without problems. Roadside grasslands are particularly attractive to breeding birds because of their the abundance of clover leaves and protection from predators.

Hundreds of geese have been spotted off roads in Gelderland in the east of the country and elsewhere. Others have been swooping down into the paths of cars and lorries, presumably seeking to protect their offspring. A stretch of road in the town of Opheusden, in Gelderland, reported four collisions in a week.

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Watch: Dutch police train birds to take down unauthorised drones

Eagles are trained by Dutch police to attack unauthorised drones

As the use of drones increasingly worries everyone from firefighters and air traffic control to law enforcement, Netherlands’ national police have aligned themselves with a group that hates flying robots on principle: the bald eagle.

Dutch police have joined forces with Guard From Above, a raptor-training security firm based in the Hague, to keep wayward drones from causing trouble by snatching them out of the sky.

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Twitcher shocked by rare eagle owl he was looking out for as it landed on the back of his head

Just in time for pantomime season - "It's behind you!"

By Helena Horton

3:48PM GMT 27 Nov 2015

A twitcher - that's a bird-watcher to me and you - was looking out for a magnificent and rare eagle-owl in the Netherlands when he got a massive shock.

The bird he was looking out for came really close to him!

Too close, in fact - it landed on the back of his head, as a colleague captured the moment on camera.

Photo: Chris Meewis/Mercury Press

The wildlife photographers travelled to the town of Hilversum in the Netherlands after hearing that a large Eurasian eagle-owl, usually only spotted in remote forests, had been seen on the roof of a house near some playing fields.

One photographer was so busy looking through his camera lense that he didn't notice the bird was making a beeline for his head.

Chris Meewis, who took the photo, told the Daily Mail: "We were all there waiting to see if we could spot this owl and photographers had come from all over to see it as it is a really magnificent bird.

"It was supposed to be living on the roof of this house near some playing fields and everyone had set up their cameras but were yet to spot it. Suddenly out of nowhere this huge shape appeared and landed on one of the photographer’s heads.

"It was so funny as all of the cameras suddenly turned on him. There he was thinking he was the one taking the picture and suddenly he finds himself the centre of one! Everyone was laughing but he was in complete shock and just stood there very still."

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Godwit wins second poll to become Dutch national bird

Society November 18, 2015    

The black-tailed godwit (grutto) has been voted the Netherlands’ national bird by bird protection group Vogelbescherming and radio show Vroege Vogels (early birds). 


The blackbird took second place in the online poll and the common sparrow was third. In total, 41,699 people took part in the vote, with the godwit, a migratory wader, taking 25% of the vote. Some 85% of the godwit population breed in the Netherlands, making it rightly the country’s national bird, Vogelbescherming spokesman Kees de Pater told the Telegraaf. 

‘Within Amsterdam’s boundaries, more godwits breed than in Britain and France together.’

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 

Dutch ‘national bird’ numbers decline sharply

October 1, 2015 

There has been a sharp drop in the Dutch population of black-tailed godwits, a migratory wader which is considered by many to be the national bird of the Netherlands. 

This year’s breeding season was a disaster, producing just 4,600 young, according to bird protection group Vogelbescherming Nederland. At least 10,000 eggs need to hatch to preserve the population numbers. In the 1960s, there were over 125,000 breeding pairs of godwits, known as gruttos in Dutch. There are now thought to be well below 40,000.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: