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Yesterday Bryson, one of our Fulbright exchange students from the US, caught a first marten for his telemetry study close to our house so I went up to have a look and took some pics … check them out! It was really cool, the animal darted out of the trap on release!!

It is really interesting sometimes how cultural heritage persists in corners of the world - today the mixing of German with English seems to be getting more prominent in Germany, however, the emigrants to the United States in two centuries ago obviously faced the same problem and the result of this was an own dialect: Texas-German. I listened to the sample provided here and was stunned, it really is rather fluent and if it is as stable a language grid as the project claims (and not just plain incorrectly anglicized German) it is extremly interesting. Enjoy listening …

… hmm that would be quite a job … zoologist on Bird Island next to South Georgia. If anyone needs a reason to get away and wants to handle penguins: Perfect! Bird Island (54° 00′S, 38° 02′W) close to the main island of South Georgia is in the sub-Antarctic and has one of the densest breeding populations of land based marine predators in the world. Important species include Antarctic fur seals, macaroni penguins, and wandering albatrosses. More here …

We made use of our weekend and went to the newly built Danube Aquarium in Ulm - it was really cool, close-up watching of local freshwater fish, huge some of them, and of course we also saw the bears and the monkeys and, and, and … very nice. You hardly see those fish except on your plate every now and then but alive and in crystal clear water they are soo much prettier!! We enjoyed it thoroughly. And for everyone who does not know what pike look like or who will not believe than European wels actually do eat ducklings below some pics …

Globalization is interesting. Tiny pickled cucumbers are one of the favorite German things to have with your sandwich. They are crunchy, marinated with vinegar, mustard seeds and dill, and after one or two bites they are gone. Well, I bought a jar the other day at a Plus Market and what did it say on the glass? Produced in India. I bet Indians neither like or taste of pickles nor did they ever grow the tiny cornichons, as we call them. Now they do. For export. I found the idea disgusting and will only buy German ones now. They weren’t that good either, neither really crunchy nor yummy. After all, we know best how to make cornichons …

Kühlungsborn (IPA: [ˈkyːlʊŋsbɔʁn]) is a Seebad (seaside resort) town in the district of Bad Doberan, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is situated on the Baltic Sea coast, 11 km northwest of Bad Doberan, and 25 km northwest of Rostock. Kühl in German means … cold … so this is EXACTLY what it is. We woke up this morning and there was SNOW everywhere. Aside of that, it is a rather posh seaside town, one of the oldest baths on the Baltic Sea. Honestly, I like it, despite the fact that it is small and boring. Lots of seaside pensions, hotels, cafe, but not much else. The G8 Summit was held a few miles down the beach at Heiligendamm a little while ago. So …. lots of sand, wind, dunes, gulls .. and that’s pretty much it …

It is spring!!! Well almost … right now, it is freakin fresh out there and more like December … still, eventually reproduction will be on all wild things’ minds. So I decided to provide some shelter for the inevitable. In our yard in Detmold, a single nesting box for birds has been sadly hanging out. That not being enough, it was in a rather dangerous location where a cat could easily reach it. Thus, I ordered four more and cleaned plus relocated the already present one … AAAND: The results was more than convincing - fierce warfare in the front as well as the backyard!!! Within a 24 hours, pairs of birds were fighting over the new boxes, all in cat-safe places, on the the walls of our house right under the roof, or on long sticks over fruit tree crowns … in detail, now one box for Great Tits (nope, not THOSE, geeeez …) in the front yard and back yard each, already defended by the respective species, one for Blue Tits in the front yard. Also, one each of the semi-open breeder ones for redstarts each under the roof in a corner front and back of the house, however, those are still in Africa and it will be a another month until they come back …. Anyway, it was great to sit on the couch in the living room and watch the birds checking the boxes out, chasing each other round and enjoy it ….

Common Redstart approaching nesting box

Great Tit on feeder

This was an active weekend! Today I continued with getting up early, quick run to the pool for a few laps, breakfast with fresh bread rolls and my roommate Vera, then a bit of work and afterwards hiking with three friends more or less cross country to the Spatzennest (Sparrow’s nest), a house and restaurant by the local Naturfreunde (Friends of the Earth) in a nature reserve not far from here. So I picked everyone up and we walked there in something like three hours through forest, farmland, and gullies with steep slopes, mud holes and rain included!!! It was great fun!! We even came across a soccer game on a village’s soccer field and watched and cheered for a while *hehe*  Fortunately, there was sun, not too much rain, it was pleasently warm and many spring flowers such as Märzenbecher (Snowflakes) were already covering the ground in the forest. It was nice getaway! Now I am off to take a hot shower … YAYYYYY!!!

I walked to uni after lunch, it really nice and sunny out and not too cold. I came past a hedge row with rocks piled up longside on both sides, and saw a mouse run in and out between the rocks toward me. Too my surprise, only seconds later I saw something the size of a mouse but a lot longer!!!! A Mauswiesel or Least Weasel in English was out for Sunday lunch!! It was really incredible. The mouse surfaced and vanished under a rock, then the weasel, then the mouse. Eventually, the weasel waited on a rock, some 10 feet away from me silently watching, and then the poor mouse peeked out - one squeak, and the weasel had found lunch. Wow. Live predation right in front of me. The weasel dragged the mouse under a rock. It came out a few more times since it had noticed me and checked whether I was still around :)  Smart guy! Anyway, never seen anything like this before. Very cool!