Some more geese from Schrevenpark

Surely those bar-headed geese in Schrevenpark are not wild birds originally. Bar-headed geese commonly breed in Central Asia and spend the winters in India and Pakistan. They would certainly not choose to be here (Kiel is a pretty cold place I am about to find out), so they must have been introduced. Nevertheless,they are very pretty and it's fun to see them so close by. They are not very shy either. We were surprised to see that not all of them are ringed, though. Maybe they breed here? I'll have to check more closely.





That makes an old question arise: When can one consider a species wild? How many generations of wild-life does it take? I mean, strictly speaken, we wouldn't be allowed to count pheasants and canada geese either, right, since they have been introduced?

Bird of the day:
Bar-headed goose - Streifengans - Stripgås - Oie à tête barrée - Anser indicus

Hybrid goose in Schrevenpark, Kiel

Well, I haven't been around much yet in Northern Germany, as I spent most of my weekends either furnishing my so far still pretty empty apartment (that is except for the cartons and boxes) or dancing at somebody else's wedding. Still, I live very close to a park called Schrevenpark which is pretty interesting, at least in terms of geese. I hope to be able to cover all different species. Today I give you two at a time in form of a hybrid:



This is definitely a canada goose hybrid and I would suspect greylag goose as the other parent. But I have no experience whatsoever with goose hybrids. (By the way, we blogged about a very similar one from Råstasjön South of Stockholm, before.) Anyway, Schrevenpark has several more goose species to offer... but I'll get to that in a future post.

Ubiquitous winter wren... also outside my living room window

The winter wren is certainly one of the most thriving bird species here in Kiel, it’s as if every little garden here has its own winter wren territory. You hear them singing everywhere, no matter where you are downtown and if there is only a little lonely bush somewhere, be sure to hear a winter wren sing in it. Amazing.

Well, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard one just outside my living room window yesterday. That’s the one:


And that’s a sonogram of a winter wren’s song, it's so powerful that your ears almost hurt sometimes. And from this little bird!


Listen to the corresponding sound here.

And that’s the tree outside my living room window, I am afraid I don’t really know what kind of tree that is…



Bird of the day:
Gärdsmyg -- Zaunkönig -- Winter Wren -- Troglodyte mignon -- Winterkoning (NL) -- Troglodytes troglodytes