Just back from taking a group of teenagers on a week's cultural school visit to Berlin. Apart from the fact that it's an amazing city, and I wish I'd spent a few years there in my youth, the birding was interesting.
First up, the default crow there is the Hooded Crow. Second, House Sparrows are thriving, and seem to be ubiquitous and confident, as they were at home in my youth. Thirdly, nuthatches (which I'd never seen before) and GSW abound in the city parks.
But the real treat was a visit to the former Brand-Briesen Soviet Air Base outside the city. This was home to a company that built a massive free-standing dome in the nineties, in which to build cargo-transporting zeppelins. They never built a prototype and went bust. But it was bought by a Chinese-malaysian outfit that turned it into a covered tropical-island holiday park. I jest you not. Horrific, like the domes in the Sci-Fi movie 'Silent Running'. With real tropical jungle, waterfalls, swimming pools, villages, chalets, parrots, flamingoes and free-flying canaries....all inside the dome. You can go for a holiday there and never leave the dome.
I left the dome 'cos it gave me 'Nam flashbacks, and I've never been to 'Nam. The kids were safe, tropical-holidaying for a few hours, so I went birding around the former airbase (complete with abandoned camouflaged earth-covered hangars for MIGs).
I saw male hen harriers hunting and disputing territory, plus my first ever Great Grey Shrike, Woodlark and Tree Pipit. And a green woodpecker, and a host of other LBJ's that I couldn't ID. Cracking day. Around a former Soviet Airbase, transformed into a German Zeppelin Factory, transformed into a Chinese-owned Tropical Island. Sometimes I wonder if God is making this up as he goes along.
First up, the default crow there is the Hooded Crow. Second, House Sparrows are thriving, and seem to be ubiquitous and confident, as they were at home in my youth. Thirdly, nuthatches (which I'd never seen before) and GSW abound in the city parks.
But the real treat was a visit to the former Brand-Briesen Soviet Air Base outside the city. This was home to a company that built a massive free-standing dome in the nineties, in which to build cargo-transporting zeppelins. They never built a prototype and went bust. But it was bought by a Chinese-malaysian outfit that turned it into a covered tropical-island holiday park. I jest you not. Horrific, like the domes in the Sci-Fi movie 'Silent Running'. With real tropical jungle, waterfalls, swimming pools, villages, chalets, parrots, flamingoes and free-flying canaries....all inside the dome. You can go for a holiday there and never leave the dome.
I left the dome 'cos it gave me 'Nam flashbacks, and I've never been to 'Nam. The kids were safe, tropical-holidaying for a few hours, so I went birding around the former airbase (complete with abandoned camouflaged earth-covered hangars for MIGs).
I saw male hen harriers hunting and disputing territory, plus my first ever Great Grey Shrike, Woodlark and Tree Pipit. And a green woodpecker, and a host of other LBJ's that I couldn't ID. Cracking day. Around a former Soviet Airbase, transformed into a German Zeppelin Factory, transformed into a Chinese-owned Tropical Island. Sometimes I wonder if God is making this up as he goes along.
