Socks’ Adventures: Walking the Wadden

Giliell’s Notes: The Wadden is a national treasure and national park and an area with imense biodiversity, despite its occasionally bleak looks. It’s fascinating, it’s interesting, but also very dangerous. The difference between low and high tide can be several metres of water in hight and some kilometres in area. The dangerous parts are the tidal creeks. They are like rivers in the Wadden, up to several metres deep in some places, but deceptively shallow in others. At low tide, it’s no problem to cross them and walk up the the water’s edge. When the tide is turning, the edge doesn’t move much, so you might not even notice that it has changed. During the first two hours the water just fills the tidals creeks. Then they run over and the tide climbs in earnest, up to 2cm per minute. If you’re still behind the tidal creeks, you’re now trapped, as the water is now coming from both sides and the current in the creeks is strong and dangerous. That is the moment you call 110 and get to know a lot of people who will now think badly of you. If you want to experience the Wadden, go on a guided tour. If you don’t wnat to spend money, wait until the guided tours set out and stay behind them.

Socks:

They told me we were going on an adventure, but then they put me in the car. Why do all adventures have to start with the car? Anyway, we went to a different place and walked to the big water, only that the big water was gone, but instead there were people and they all went for a walk with me. That’s nice, I like going on walks. I also like the sand and the mud. You can dig in there or do wormies. I love doing wormies, but mum insists on giving me a shower afterwards. Spoilsport.

A small black and brown dog digging in the sand

A small black brown dog rolling over in the sand. You can see the pattern of last tide's waves in the sand

Things were fine for a while until we came to a creek and the nice lady who was walking with us said: “Hmpf, I thoight the water would be lower by now. There’s no help for it, we need to walk through.” And by walking, she meant swimming. Not for the twoleggers, but for poor small doggies. I can swim. I just don’t like it a lot.

On we went and I must say, there were a lot of interesting things, but mum, cruel as she is, didn’t let me have them. No live crabs, no crab shells, no crab shells with half rotten crab parts in them. That was mean! I also wasn’t allowed to chase all them birdies.

Seagulls flying over a tidal creek and exposed sand, with wind turbines in the back

At some point the twoleggers got very excited, claiming to have spotted some sea dogs (German for seals). Hearing that, I was very excited, too. Would they be nice? Did they want to play? I can tell you, it was very disappointing. The so called sea dogs turned out to be blobs on the far away shore. Not okay.

View across the water towards the opposite shore. On the beach you can see several brown blobs. They're real seals, promise

Another thing I don’t understand ist the twoleggers obsession with walking to things. The things are never intersting stuff like a nice lady’s pee puddle or a delicious dead animal or something. No, in this case it was a big metal thingy surrounded by water. You know, I wouldn’t have minede it the thing had been on the sand and not in the water, because at that point I really needed to pee, but there was nowhere to pee against.

Giliell’s notes: What you can see is the lower range light of a pair of guiding lights. While a lighthouse is typically telling ships where not to go, these tell ypu where to go: You line up the lower range light and the upper range light and keep them straight. Right next to it is the channel towards Bremerhaven, which is deep enough for some of the world’s biggest ships to pass through.

Anther fun thing was the water. Thankfully I didn’t need to swim again on the way back, but the ground was always wet. That’s OK, but can somebody please tell me how I got wet all over? I can’t remember having agreed to any of that!

A small black and brown dog is sitting on the sand. His wet fur is plastered against his body, except for a line of hair on his ridge, standing up like a mohawk

Finally we returned to the land and boy was I glad! I ran towards the first tufts of grass and peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. 3.5 hours with no peeing is no fun, I can tell you. So if you ever go to the Wadden, remember to bring your own tree, because they’re really lacking in the tree department there. I wonder how those sea dogs are doing it.

Holidays with Hindrances 4: Muckross House, Farm and Abbey

Welcome back. I hope you’re having a nice weekend before we all go in for another round tomorrow.

While in Killarney we didn’t actually visit Killarney House, but went to Muckross House instead, since that was just 5km from our campsite, so we went there on foot, visiting Muckross Abbey on our way.

A beautiful hike past the lake.

Muckross Abbey is a very pretty ruin, but the graveyard has been in use since at least the 2000s.

Tree growing in a small courtyard in the ruin of the abbey

That one looked amazing. I’m sure there’s a message in the tree long surviving the religious building.

grey brown manor house. On the hedge in front there#s a plush opossum

Welcome to Muckross House. Our plush of the day is Opossible, who enjoyed his trip a lot.

Richly furnished room with a golden harp

“Ireland was a poor country” my ass…

According to legend, Lady Catherine died at 140 when she fell out of an apple tree. Life goals!

The gardens were truly beautiful.

Muckross Farm is an open air museum depicting rural life in Ireland in the 1950s. Yes, you read that right. Apart from trades like the blacksmith they have three farmhouses showing a poor family farm, a middle class family farm and a well off family farm. Remember that nice room in the picture above? In the 1950s people in rural Ireland lived like they hadn’t lived on the continent for at least 50 years. no running water, no electricity. Good old medieval “1 room for sleeping, 1 room for living and sleeping” conditions. But the animals were very cute.

This year I did something new: I shamelessly took selfies and asked people to take pics of me. Am I young and pretty? No. Am I alive? Yes. the person with the camera rarely ends up in pics themself, but I realised that if I died tomorrow, my family would probably forget what I look like in a week because there’s no pics. Here they are. That horse was amazing.

Grey Heron

Avalus has encountered this dapper beauty and managed to snap a few pictures for us. It is a long time since I have seen a live heron. Decades, in fact, since the nearest water reservoir where they at least occasionally occur is more than an hour’s worth of brisk walk from my home. It seemed closer when I was a kid.

Walking in the Woods

Two weeks ago Mr and I went to our local woods for the first time this year. Living next to swamp and marshland has its advantages, but it also meant that for most of this year the paths were unwalkable, unless you wanted to recreate that child-traumatising scene from the Neverending Story where Ayax drowns in the moor. It was nice, apart from the fact that the mosquitos must have been starved before they got us.

We found lots of common earthballs (though I really like the name “pigskin poison puffball”, which would make an amazing name for a band), which are nice to look at, but not good for eating if you value your survival.

And I met a frog. I don’t think that they are poisonous.

small brown frog sitting in green leaves

Midsummer Afternoon – Part 2 – Fish in the Aquarium

Guest posts by Ice Swimmer

There is a brackish water fish exhibit on the island Harakka. The fishes, caught from the Gulf of Finland, spend their summer in aquariums and they are released back to the sea in the Autumn. In the Baltic Sea, both freshwater tolerant of some salinity and marine tolerant of low salinity species live next to each other.

The fish pictured here are less typical or well-known in Finnish waters.

In the first picture, a tench can be seen. In Fínnish, it’s called suutari, which means cobbler or shoemaker (but the name may have nothing to do with making shoes, the fish is called sutare in Swedish and shoemaker is skomakare in Swedish). The tenches were rather inactive in the aquarium. The tench is freshwater fish.

There are some pipefishes in the Baltic Sea. The pipefishes are relatives of sea horses. This broadnosed pipefish is one of them. The broadnosed pipefish is called särmäneula (edge needle, neula = needle) in Finnish. The “edges” are lengthwise bony plates under the skin, which make fish look “edgy” according to Finnish Wikipedia. Broadnosed pipefish is a marine species that’s tolerant of brackish water.

In the third picture, we see a round goby. It is an invasive species from the Black Sea Area.

In the second aquarium post, we shall be playing a game inspired by “Spot the lizard!”.

Most Boring Game of “Find That Lizard”

In case you don’t already know, “Find that lizard” is a fun game Dr. Earyn McGee is hosting on Twitter, where you get a photo of a yard or something with a lizard hidden somewhere, often showing how well these creatures blend with their environment. Well, my own lizards are lazy, which is why I got to take this shot:

As you can see, the little fellow lost its tail and is currently regrowing it. You sure deserve a break, buddy!

Have some Flowers

While we took a look at the cultivated garden yesterday, today it’s time to look at the wilder side with some flowers.

These poppies are just amazing. Too bad the rain ruined them all.

Here’s some simpler ones.

Last year I threw some cheap flower seeds on one area. They turned put top be white mustard, which bloomed last year, and alfalfa, which is growing like mad this year. The bees love it, the degus love it, I’ll let it flower so it can seed next year’s crop as well.

And a colourful beetle. It was somewhat shy and I only had the mobile, so the pic isn’t great.

Winter Wonderland 2: Swanlake meets Frozen

The swans are the mascots of the whole village. The old pair divorced and moved out some time in 2019, so last autumn they got a new breeding pair with two juveniles. They have shelter on a little island and get fed and I must say, they are remarkably relaxed for swans, especially since the pond has been busier than I’ve ever seen it. Can’t wait for Covid to be over and people going elsewhere again.