wildlife (part II)

A few posts ago you may have read my first entry about wildlife.  Well, I've seen a few things since, and want to include them for you here:

Now this first shot is a bit of a stretch, in terms of wildlife.  But I needed to put this photo somewhere because I think it shows the striking clash of the two worlds in Vecses, and perhaps in much of Hungary.  The beautiful, reliable old-school horse and wagon being overtaken by the modern auto.  It may interest some non-Hungarian readers that one of the few words in English that came from Hungarian is "coach" from the word "kocsi" (co-chee) which is a carriage, produced and exported from Hungary a very long time ago. Apparently they were sent as presents to royalty around Europe.  In Hungarian it's now also another word for car.  The pink house is my grandma's niece's place, where my grandma is currently staying.

classic Vecses scene

Let's get the iffy wildlife over with first.  Here is a pet rabbit at another relative's place.  Darn, I forget its name and gender.  Anyway, they were trying to prove to me that it has eyes.  (By the way, did you know that you can click on images to expand them?  Try it and see the one eye!  No doubt there's another eye on the other side.)

Csaba, Szilvia, & one-eyed rabbit

And I know pigeons are a bit of a stretch too, but I was mildly excited to see a pigeon coop in Vecses. (Hungarians: I know the second "e" in Vecses should have an accent, but I don't have a Hungarian keyboard  so it's just too hard to get it in.  I don't think this will devastate the Vecses tourism industry!  Everyone else: it's pronounced vech-eysh.)

Vecsesi pigeon coop

Vecsesi pigeons from that coop

I was excited to hear and then see a woodpecker in the front yard in Vecses!  I had to hang out the kitchen window to capture it.  This is only one out of about 30 awful photos of it:

woodpecker

young pigeons on my balcony, moments before a forced fledge

In case anyone was curious about the baby pigeons on my balcony in Debrecen, the good news is that they fledged from their nest recently!  The bad news is that I opened the door to get a better photo of them and really startled them, causing what I think was an early first flight, forcing them to flap desperately for the roof across the street!  Sorry little guys.  Don't you realize I'm the one who put those crumbs on the balcony for you?





Here's a billboard we stumbled upon in the "DEBRECEN GREAT FOREST" as the title says.  The next phrase has something to do with natural blah blah.  Hungarians, please feel free and encouraged, to comment with translations and corrections!

great forest nature billboard

I went to Veszprem recently (accent on the second "e", so it sounds like ves-pray m.) Near Veszprem is the great lake Balaton, apparently the largest lake in Europe.  Poor Europe, which in its entirety probably fits inside our great lakes in Canada, which are just a few of hundreds of giant lakes. Regardless, the Balaton is plenty beautiful and I had perfect weather there for scampering in the icy water and strolling and reminiscing. (Many years ago I lived for one year in Balatonalmadi where I taught Physics for the first time; yes, in English.)

water fowl in the Balaton

As you can imagine, by November the Balaton is very chilly.  It beckoned me into it, but I didn't bring a bathing suit (which hasn't stopped me in the past!) and I had the feeling that if I went all the way in, I wouldn't be able to get out and they would discover my popsicle body frozen in an awkward embarrassing half diving pose. Instead I just waded in a bit, the icy water burning my feet such that I could only stay a minute or two, then jump out and shake them and say "ooouuu ouuu ooou" really loud or if a Hungarian was passing I'd switch to the more understandable "huuuuu haaa, huuuu ha, huu ha!"

clams in the Balaton

I can't claim the fame of discovering this little gem in cedar shrub; a couple were on their knees taking macro photos of a shrub, so I had to see what was up.  There was a similar snake in the shrub on the left.

I have no idea what kind of snake this is; but it's pretty!

another nature billboard, this one at lake Balaton

On my way back on a bus, I spotted a pretty fox, laid out lengthwise on the side of the road.  Since it was somehow still graceful there, I thought, only for an instant, that it was sleeping; but it was obviously road-kill. It brought me back in my mind to an encounter I had with a fox in Germany: I was sleeping in a sleeping bag on the lawn under the stars beside a castle in Heidelberg when I was suddenly awoken by the feeling of being dragged by my feet.  Well, just one foot.  When I gained full consciousness, but couldn't believe that I had, I saw a fox and realized he was clamped onto my foot through the sleeping bag, painlessly.  And he was struggling to drag me into the black forest.  I know it wasn't a dream.  I made a pathetic cry aloud, in shock and he jumped back, still facing me, staring me down for a few moments.  I reached for my bag with my camera in it and he scampered off into the forest. I got a dark blurry picture in which can be seen a distant, tiny, faint rusty blur.

Seeing this dead fox on the side of the road in Hungary and reminiscing about my past encounter in Germany inspired me to write a poem during my bus ride back to Budapest.  I'm too insecure to include it here.  It might be a masterpiece, but more than likely it's crap. It's only the second poem I've written (as far as I can recall) and this is the only one I actually like.

Back in Debrecen one evening I had what was to me a mystical experience with an animal.  I was strolling downtown in the pedestrian square and heard the beeping of a bank machine as I passed someone doing a transaction.  Then I detected another layer of sound on top of that, something strikingly beautiful.  I circled around, perhaps a bit too close to the guy making his withdrawal, and saw him nervously look over his shoulder a couple times.  Finally I located the source of the sound: a smallish black bird in a small tree above me.  I could be wrong, but it seemed to be communicating with the bank machine beeps.  The guy scurried off with his cash and the machine fell silent, and so did the bird.  I whistled something short and random, and the bird seemed to immediately reply with a tune slightly more complex.  I tried to match it.  The bird added some impossibly complex gurgles and lengthened our duet.  This repeated three times, us taking turns, until the bird perhaps became bored and blew me away with a one minute symphony that I could never believe a single bird could achieve, if I didn't see it with my own eyes and hear it with my own ears!  Then it fell silent, its victory utterly obvious, and I strolled off, defeated by orders of magnitude, but delighted by the exchange.

In the last post about wildlife, I guessed that this black and grey bird was a magpie.  I've seen magpies in Australia but forgot that they are pitch black and snow white, not grey like these birds I see around here.  Thanks to Kitti for suggesting that it's a hooded crow, common in eastern Europe.  I double-checked and she's right.  Since then I saw a lot of magpies in the cemetery in Budapest after the Day of the Dead, no doubt rummaging around and finding lots of shiny objects to steal such as the lids to the contained candles.  They're clever and shy and so I never got close enough for a clear photo.

But these hooded crows are clever too!  At the same cemetery I kept hearing a loud, hollow clunk every couple minutes.  I followed the sound and found a hooded crow pecking at something on a marble patio in front of a tall structure in the centre of the cemetery. I saw that it looked like a walnut.  From a distance I watched the crow pick it up, fly to the top of the building, and drop it onto the marble slab below with a loud clunk.  Then he would fly down and see if it split sufficiently to get the contents out.  I approached to get a photo but it got spooked and flew off.  I felt bad because the cracked walnut was left behind.  Although I was hungry, no, I didn't eat it.

Here's the guy again who caught the pike.  In the close-up you can see that he's even more shocked than I was to see what looks exactly like a northern pike in Hungary.  It could be a musky but without the stripes or spots it's hard to tell.

It begs so many questions: how did he catch it? Why is he fishing naked? Why is he in a cemetery?

Ya, I know, this is really morbid.  But it really fascinated me to see that a crow died and didn't even make it to the ground.  Sorry if it bothers some.  It's just part of the cycle of life.  There's a lot of mosquitoes here and back home this could be a sign of the West Nile virus (we're told to report sightings of dead birds, and I think especially crows for some reason.)  Now I wonder if the West Nile virus is in Hungary, and if so, if I'm the only one who has considered that!

But to be honest, considering the multitude of crows that I later saw, the chances of seeing a dead one must be fairly high.  Apparently hoards of crows collect in Hungary this time of year from all over eastern Europe.  I was waiting for a bus for a while, to take me back to town from the big cemetery in Debrecen, and noticed how scores of crows where passing overhead.  After a while I realized that I unconsciously viewed dozens of large groups go by and became conscious that it would add up to a lot of crows!  Just as the bus was finally arriving, I beheld a giant whirl-wind funnel of crows over the cemetery across the street.  My jaw dropped and I staggered across the road toward the cemetery, oblivious to the fact that my bus had at long last arrived.

Unfortunately, once again, by the time I got closer, regained my presence of mind, drew out my camera and turned it on, they began to disband and settle into the trees.  Notice all the trees behind the cemetery building in the photo below, weighed down with dozens of crows.

Breath-taking or creepy?  It seems superstitious to find it creepy.  I do admit that if I was directly under such a volume of birds, I might find the high probability of getting splattered with some messy fallout rather creepy, indeed.