November 19, 2020

Dutch data award for major bird database

Filed under: Animals,Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:51 am

Led by Antica Culina and Marcel Visser of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Studies of Populations of Individuals (SPI-Birds) is a network of researchers who collect, secure and use long-term breeding population data of 1.5 million individually recognisable birds, an amount that keeps increasing. SPI-Birds have recently been awarded the Dutch Data Incentive Prize for the Medical and Life Sciences and very recently published their first scientific paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology, which coincides with them receiving the award. They’ve got the wind under their wings.

“Behind the paper describing our initiative, there are around 120 people and 1.5 million individually marked birds from 80 populations and 19 species. And an army of people who have been collecting these data, in sunshine and rain, adding up to over 2000 seasons of fieldwork.” explains Culina.

Having access to this database means preventing lost data and increasing future data quality with a community-supported standard. “SPI-Birds is important, because it allows comparative studies among populations by making the data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). Converting the various data formats into a single standard data format, especially, really facilitates the use of the data.” says Visser.

The first SPI Bird paper aims to describe the network for new members and stakeholders, and its ‘lessons learned’ in order to inspire other communities. “We hope SPI-Birds will serve as an encouragement to other research communities to create their own standards,” Culina adds.

(Link: phys.org)

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July 8, 2018

Iris van Herpen presents bird-inspired dresses

Filed under: Animals,Design,Fashion,Photography by Orangemaster @ 5:24 pm

Amsterdam-based Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen has created a series of dresses that replicate the feathers and soundwave patterns of birds in flight, which was presented a few days ago at Le Trianon, Paris for the Paris Haute Couture fashion week.

To go along with them, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta of Amsterdam’s Studio Drift had an installation of moving glass tubes that also capture the motion of birds in flight. Inspired by Studio Drift, Van Herpen also used chronophotography, a Victorian photographic technique that captures movement in several frames of print.

(Link and photo: dezeen.com)

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December 13, 2017

Cat narrates nature film about Amsterdam

Filed under: Animals,Film,Nature by Orangemaster @ 1:40 pm

From the makers of ‘De Nieuwe Wildernis’ (‘The New Wilderness’), a documentary about wildlife in the Oostvaardersplassen (‘the lakes of those who sailed to the East’) that got 400,000 people to the cinema in just a month, comes ‘De Wilde Stad’ (‘The Wild City’), with all the amazing wildlife you can find in Amsterdam.

The film is ‘narrated’ by a cat called Abatutu that runs into many animals, including those crayfish we keep telling you about.

From seagulls that steal your fries to the grey mice found everywhere in Amsterdam, the movie’s trailer was released this week and gives us a glimpse of what’s to come on 1st March 2018, a later release date than originally planned, when Dutch cinemas will be showing the film. Music in the trailer by Dutch band The Kik, with ‘Ik zie je in stad’.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo of Brown rat by Jean-Jacques Boujot, some rights reserved)

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June 5, 2017

Word premiere: cuckoos on live stream

Filed under: Animals,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 8:19 pm

Cuckoo-1

A world first from the ornithologists, the Dutch Bird Protection Society (Vogelbescherming) has set up a live stream on a cuckoo’s nest. And that’s always amusing to say, considering the cuckoo can’t be arsed to build its own nest, but uses other birds’ nest to lay its eggs in. According to Wikipedia, although its eggs are larger than those of its hosts, the eggs in each type of host nest resemble the host’s eggs, a form of mimicry.

In the case of this live stream, this Dutch cuckoo is a bit too big for the nest it is occupying and reminds me of YouTube cat sensation Maru trying to get into a box.

There’s a steady decline of cuckoos in all of Western Europe and the cause is unclear, which is why the Dutch Bird Protection Society has named 2017 the Year of the Cuckoo and is live streaming the nest. Hundreds of thousands of people have tuned in, including us, so give it a whirl.

(Link: naturetoday.com, Screenshot of live stream)

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January 19, 2017

Mass mating dance in Utrecht for Valentine’s Day

Filed under: Animals,Art by Orangemaster @ 1:26 pm

Contemporary British artist Marcus Coates from London is asking single men to go to Utrecht Central Station at 4 pm on 14 February, which is next to city hall, to perform a mating dance. On a Tuesday when everyone works and goes to school.

Coates is planning to organise a makeshift dating show with the men doing the mating dance of the Eurasian woodcock, which involves running a certain route around the Netherlands’ biggest train station.

In the mean time, single women will be waiting at city hall to pick out a man by calling out to them, just in time to correspond with the mating season of the Eurasian woodcock.

Let’s unpack this, shall we? The first thing that came to mind is also the first comment I read: it’s heterosexist. Yeah, it’s about the birds and all, but still. And who’s paying for this? Won’t it be really busy at rush hour? And is this being done in the Netherlands so Coates gets a free trip over? Too many questions and not many answers in sight.

(Link: rtvutrecht, Photo of train by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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February 2, 2016

Police train eagles to attack drones

Filed under: Animals,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:31 am

Instead of scaring off seagulls with eagle noises like in Haarlem in 2015, the Dutch police have stepped up their game and are now training eagles to knock out ‘enemy’ drones out of the air. The idea was to find a way to get rid of drones that are not allowed to fly in certain spaces, such as protected airspaces. The video below tells of a trauma helicopter not being able to land because some moron was flying a drone and blocking the way or another moron flying their drone next to busy Schiphol Airport.

Finding the drone pilot can be very difficult and take a long time, a policeman explains. The eagle in the video grabs the drone with its talons, which are designed to carry things as opposed to just having claws like many other animals. There’s also less impressive tools they plan to use such as casting a net over the drone somehow. “The eagle sees the drone as prey and wants to bring it to a safe location and protect it from outsiders”. The trainers are not worried about the propellers hurting the animal, although opinions might differ on that point. The eagle may even get special gear for protection.

It’s in Dutch, but it’s all about watching the eagle catch the drone.

(Link: www.theverge.com, Photo of Drone by Karen Axelrad, some rights reserved)

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September 18, 2015

Feel-good bicycle art from Utrecht

Filed under: Art,Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:21 am

zadeldier

Since June someone in Utrecht has been going around putting eyes on bike saddles to make them look like birds of prey and give them names.

They have French, English and Russian names, some of which could be related to the Tour de France that started off in Utrecht this summer, others not at all. It’s making people smile and talk, like a feel-good art project should. The eyes do come off easily, but most people apparently leave them on.

The artists behind the stickers remain unknown and apparently they do fix their work if they see an eye drooping. However, one of their ‘creations’, Gino was tagged and taken away to ‘bike prison’ for being ‘illegally’ parked and they couldn’t fix that.

Will Gino ever get out? Stay tuned.

(Link: www.vogelvrijefietser.nl)

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June 26, 2015

Photographers illegally disturb birds with song app

Filed under: Animals,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:45 pm

Barnacle-Goose

Bird photographers are apparently causing problems for birds by using a phone app with bird song to lure the feathered creatures. Sounds harmless, but according to a Dutch nature website, the app used by the photographers stresses birds, making them want to defend their territory against an invisible enemy instead of using their energy for the breeding season, building nests and the likes.

The app can be played loudly on mobile devices, but should in fact be used to recognise bird song, not lure birds. By law, animals in nature that are protected species cannot be upset on purpose, but some photographers are probably going to continue to do so, as the chances of being caught are probably next to nothing.

(Link: www.ad.nl, Photo of barnacle goose by Andreas Trepte, some rights reserved)

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June 19, 2015

Birds and bees found in bike saddle bags

Filed under: Animals,Bicycles,Nature by Orangemaster @ 9:22 am

Swarmofbees

This week there was a woman in Bloemendaal, North Holland who went grocery shopping with her bike and was about to load her saddle bags only to discover that an entire swarm of bees had moved in. The queen bee apparently decided to park it there and her entire buzzing entourage followed suit. They called in a beekeeper and he got them to move to a box.

Recently there was a woman in Oirschot, Noord-Brabant who noticed twigs in her saddle bags and kept forgetting to remove them every time she got on her bike until one day she decided to clear them out and noticed a bird’s nest with five robin eggs in it. She left her bike alone until last week when five baby robins emerged from the eggs.

(Link: www.omroepbrabant.nl, Photo of swarming bees by quisnovus, some rights reserved)

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May 13, 2015

First-time spotting of nesting gull on Texel

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 4:10 pm

Black-backed

The Society for preservation of nature monuments in the Netherlands has recently found a nesting great black-backed gull on the island of Texel, officially the first time this bird has decided to nest there.

The great black-backed gull is the largest gull in the world with a wingspan of about 170 centimetres and a huge beak, which usually breeds in Scandinavia when in Europe. When the gull does decide to pay a visit to the Netherlands, it chooses Groningen where no more than 10 breeding pairs per year have been spotted. The first great black-backed gull nesting in the Netherlands is said to date back to 1993.

(Links: dearkitty, www.ecomare.nl, Photo of Great black-backed gull by Robert Eliassen, some rights reserved)

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