The Wildlife in Debrecen, Hungary

Before you biologists or naturalists get too excited, let me warn you that there isn't really any wildlife here.  Well, that's what it seemed like at first, but I did eventually discover a few mildly interesting critters.  It's weird not seeing squirrels scampering around all over the place, nor their once adventurous furry flattened carcasses littering the roadside.  Not a squirrel in the country, as far as I can tell.

"wildlife", sort of

Of course, there are the typical boring city creatures, such as pigeons galore, sparrows, and mosquitoes.  The mosquitoes are fairly plentiful.  I think I've killed an average of one per day since I arrived in Hungary, but the strange thing is that they don't seem to bite, or perhaps they don't like my foreign blood. On my balcony there is a pigeon nest behind a broom, which seems to be constructed of pigeon poo (the nest I mean, not the broom.)

my balcony with the nest behind the broom

The fledglings are getting brave and wandering around the balcony now.  That explains why you can't see them in the poo nest behind the broom.

a baby pigeon on my balcony

There are lots of crows too.  And half black, half grey ones.  Are they magpies perhaps?  I thought they were black and white, not black and grey.

a magpie?

Other than colouring, and a very wimpy call, they seem exactly like crows.

a chilly, chilling turtle

I saw this turtle come out of the frog pond in the "great forest" to sun himself, but when he felt the eight degree cold and a wind chill, he changed his mind and dove back in before I could snap a photo.  He posed nicely in the floating leaves for me when he resurfaced.

two over-crowded bat houses

I didn't even have my camera, sadly, when I first discovered something strange going on in the tree shown above.  I heard a lot of squeaking on my way by, and it was really bugging me.  I kept circling the area saying "what is that sound?"  I first thought it may be some kind of insect I didn't know about.  Then I just decided to sit under this tree and stare and listen.  Did I see something move in the dark of one of those holes, I asked myself.  Then a bat stuck his head out, then back in.  Suddenly one popped out of the top hole and took flight.  This was at 4 pm on a warm, sunny day.  Then another one popped out.  Were they young bats fledging from the nest perhaps?  They were all pretty big though. All in all I watched over a dozen bats come out of the two holes and fly away, all of them simultaneously shouting, a squeaky symphony.

I didn't see any moles, but evidence of them is obvious everywhere: myriads of molehills.  

mole hills

These bugs were unfamiliar to me.  Not common, but plentiful on this tree!

strange bugs on a tree by my street

And of course, the frog pond has frogs.  I saw some quick ones, but they were too quick for my camera, sorry.  Here is the frog pond below.

frog pond

I had to get some willow tree shots for Dharlene:

me under a willow on the bank of the frog pond

Speaking of trees, they have a lot of oak and maybe beech?  And some kind of maple with giant leaves:

big maple leaf

There are tree-huggers, and then there are hugging trees (you may have seen this guy in one of the Lord of the Rings movies)

the hugging tree

No raccoons, no colourful birds, no possums.  Not sure about wolves or coyotes.  If I get attacked by wolves in the great forest, and survive, I'll definitely blog about it for you...