Ideas from the Front Page

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leonia
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Re: Ideas from the Front Page

Post by leonia »

Leonia: elms ...
Elms unusual in Germany? But - Stadt Ulm? or is it not Ulm as in elm trees? By the way, Einstein was born in Ulm.


You're right, Liis, there are elms in Germany, I couldn't immediatelly find the right German name. But as far as I know we have a problem with the elm's disease here. Elms have a hard time. :unsure:

But the name of the town "Ulm" has nothing to do with elms. It had its name from „Hulma“. According to German Wikipedia it's a Germanic or prae-Germanic name of a water body with the Indogermanic root word *uel: turning (drehen, winden, wälzen), or *el-/*ol-: flowing, streaming, beeing damp, moldy (fließen, strömen, feucht sein, modrig sein). May be because at this place the Blau is joining the Danub (Blau --> Blautopf, Möricke, History of the beautiful Lau). :book:

By the way Ulm has a wonderful gothic cathedral, and as you wrote, Einstein was born there. And there is a lovely little novel about the sparrow of Ulm who tried to fly into the stone-tracery of the cathedral tower with a piece of straw in his bill. But because he tried it with the culm carried lateraly, he couldn't pass through the small vent. :chick:

And there was someone else who tried flying in Ulm: the tailor of Ulm, who built a machine with wings and crashed down to the ground with it. And now I'm far off topic :faint:
Liis
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Post by Liis »

Thanks, Leonia, about Ulm!

About the stray gull at the WTE feeding ground
Author Kalev Rattiste talked about the lives and loves of the mew gulls in the EOÜ lecture series last year, http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/7006 He is presently researcher at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, has also worked in Sweden and presented his thesis, Life history of the common gull, (Larus canus), A long-term individual-based study” at Uppsala University in 2006, full text here http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di ... FULLTEXT01

From the abstract:
"----The size of the white spots on five outermost primaries predicted the bird’s future survival and divorce probabilities and hence, pair endurance capabilities. Gulls with larger spots enjoyed higher survival and lower divorce rate compared to birds with small spots. ------ The timing of breeding of firm pairs advanced with time not only due to mates’ increasing age but also owing to their experience together. ----"
Intriguing!
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Post by Liis »

About the foxes who follow the trend and become city dwellers, LK main page http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/9168
There is some preliminary preview information ( Alice :hi:! ) - interview in newspaper Maaleht, Feb 5:

About 900 people in 27 Estonian cities have seen foxes in town and have already answered the questionnaire. 6% note that the tail or part of the body had loss of hair, so the foxes probably were infected with mange (scabies).
A great majority of people were happy to have urban foxes, but some 10% thought they were a nuisance and were worried about the health and safety of their pets. Also, dogs barked at foxes at night and disturbed people's sleep.
But investigator Urmas Saarma noted that less food leftovers and pet food left lying about would do much to bring down the number of fox visits.
A greater worry might be that a pilot study in 2003 showed that 1/3 of the foxes in Estonia were infected with the alveococcus tapeworm (Echinococcus) larvae, that can also infect dogs and humans and eventually damages the liver.
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Post by Liis »

Translation of article about wild animal damage to Estonian farmers, fishermen, beekeepers here: viewtopic.php?p=91607#p91607
Bears - killing sheep and robbing beehives - and various eagles - robbing fish ponds - come about equal, at 15000 and 16000 euros respectively.
Foxes are not mentioned - no robbing of hens and chickens any more?
On the other hand the report talks of protected wild animal species, and the foxes probably are not ...
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Post by Liis »

Weather man - and fan - Jüri Kamenik's summary of the 2010 weather in Estonia is up in English, at long last http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/9440
Fascinating aspects of weather: when, how, where, why it came about.
Jüri Kamenik has kindly checked the weather terms, but any and all mistakes are of course the translator's.
And as always - the better original, the more difficult to get it across in a translation ... :cry:

PS. Oh dear ... the elk/moose/m-elk season is upon us yet again ... http://www.looduskalender.ee/node/9439

And there is concern in Sweden about the first corroborated find of the dwarf tapeworm, Echinococcus, in a fox in western Sweden. Although with 1/3 of Estonian foxes infected, viewtopic.php?p=90976#p90976 berry and mushroom picking still seems to go on with no qualms. Or is it a different worm?
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Fleur
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Post by Fleur »

Thank you for the link on the frontpage
http://eestirannik.ut.ee
good to be this way have a look along the coastline.
interesting indication of the animals and plants that live and grow
leonia
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Post by leonia »

Liis wrote:And as always - the better original, the more difficult to get it across in a translation ... :cry:
Oh yes Liis, you're surely right. I tried my best too, but sometimes I wasn't really sure . . . :dunno:
And I think it was the longest article I ever translated, so now :offtobed:
Liis
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Post by Liis »

Fleur wrote:Thank you for the link on the frontpage
http://eestirannik.ut.ee
good to be this way have a look along the coastline.
interesting indication of the animals and plants that live and grow
Nice that you liked the link, Fleur!
The texts are seriously educational, a pity they are Estonian only. Nearest places (dots) to the seals and Vilsandi on the map are probably Harilaiu and Vaika (straight left from label "Baltic Sea").

Another thing, about rooks checking nest sites: I seem to remember that rooks were actually eaten, even rather recently, at least in southern Sweden (Skåne / Scania) and Denmark. Rook pie? Anyone heard of it?
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Post by Jo UK »

Rook Pie - that seems familiar. Not that I have ever eaten it, but maybe I saw it on a Country Ways TV program?

Anyway, here is a Scottish Rook Pie recipe.
Please tell me if anyone here makes it AND EATS IT

http://www.scottish-recipes.com/rook-pie.html

Here is another, from a forum
http://www.rivercottage.net/forum/ask/w ... 67rook-pie

I see that rook is not classified as "game"
We were discussing the use of the word game recently.
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Post by Liis »

Thanks, Jo!
Found a recipe on braised rook, about as braised pigeon, in a book on regional Swedish food.
Why only rooks, of all the corvids? Colonies are of course easy to harvest. And magpies, ravens and crows can be unpleasantly vindictive when their nests are robbed. But jackdaws should be about the same; smaller of course.

More about game (well, wild food?) and kitchen:
The wife of a Swedish game preservation project director wrote a couple of very readable (if not altogether cookable) cookbooks. She was obviously presented with rather unlikely things on her kitchen table. - The books include detailed instructions to hunters on how to prepare their gifts before they land in the kitchen ... :mrgreen: No rooks though.

A tale is that mercury poisoning of birds of prey was discovered when the curator at a Swedish nature museum started showing signs of mental deviation. He used to prepare meals from the meat of specimens sent in for investigation ...

PS. It seems horribly callous to eat barely-fledged young rooks (rook chicks?). But if the rooks are decimated anyway (colonies are/were considered nuisances) - well, better then to at least have made some use of them - I guess ...
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Post by Liis »

The urban foxes again - afraid Estonian foxes can't beat this: London fox at top of skyscraper.
He is thought to have climbed there all by himself.
And was christened Romeo - wasn't it Julia who was up on the balcony? Or - oh, they thought he was looking for his Julia?
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Post by alice44 »

I made no sense of the name. But I did wonder at the construction workers leaving enough food around to feed a fox.
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Post by Arvi »

Liis wrote:The urban foxes again - afraid Estonian foxes can't beat this: London fox at top of skyscraper.
He is thought to have climbed there all by himself.
And was christened Romeo - wasn't it Julia who was up on the balcony? Or - oh, they thought he was looking for his Julia?
http://kummut-tegelinski.blogspot.com/2 ... otsas.html :whistling:
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

Liis
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Post by Liis »

Notice in Swedish newspapers today: World's oldest ringed WTE -
http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/9327 - found dead on Foglö in the Åland archipelago (in the Baltic midway between Finland and Sweden).
And some confusion as to its nationality. Sweden claims it as Swedish, being ringed in Sweden. The LK article says ringed in Sodankylä, Finland.
It seems that Sweden's claim will be honoured: the bird has been sent to the Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM) for examination.
According to the newspaper notice birds get the "nationality" of the country where they are ringed.
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alice44
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Post by alice44 »

:cry:
Liis
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Post by Liis »

alice44 wrote::cry:
Yes, truly :cry: , agree, Alice!
An Åland newspaper says that the eagle was found already a couple of weeks ago; a local resident noticed ravens around something on the ice and discovered it.
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Post by Liis »

Bird chit-chat:
About the green-coloured woodpeckers article: so near and so different - in Sweden the green woodpecker is by far much more common than the grey-headed woodpecker; less than 10 000 pairs for the greyhead, up to 40 000 for the green.

Most common birds in the Estonian winter garden bird survey : great tit and tree sparrow. Swedish preliminary results : (1) Great tit, (2) Tree sparrow, (3) Blue tit, (4) Yellowhammer, (5) Greenfinch, (6) Bullfinch, (7) Magpie, (8) Blackbird (9),Jackdaw (10) House sparrow. Top birds largely same as every year; Bullfinch and jay had increased the most compared to 2010; Berry- and nut-eaters such as waxwings, thrushes, fieldfares, bramblings were clearly much fewer (120 000 bramblings reported 2010, 6 000 this year)
Results from other countries, please, forum members?

More Estonian winter birds - check the embroidered white dress at the presidential reception on Feb 24
http://www.ohtuleht.ee/galerii/pildigalerii/3283#75
http://www.ohtuleht.ee/galerii/pildigalerii/3283#82
One of the spotted woodpeckers & a sparrow can be recognised ... Sadly, Õhtuleht has scrapped the best photo; it featured a blackbird, a blue tit, a jay and some more

EDIT: Some better bird views HERE
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macdoum
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Post by macdoum »

:D That very pretty lady is great at embroidery. ( or her mother is )
Carmel a member of SHOW .. I hope you love birds too. Its economical. It saves going to heaven.
Emily Dickinson
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Post by Liis »

The Brown bears article - ever new things, for some of us :blush: .
All my life I have firmly believed that the bear's winter den is a proper cave, with proper roof and walls, natural or dug out or under the improved root turf of uprooted trees. Stories of angry bears wakened in winter always seem to tell about crawling out of den openings.
Not so; it appears, with illustrations, in the article that they may well lie almost in the open, although preferably in a hollow.
Brrrr - cold ... What do they do in a blizzard? get snowed over? stay snowed over?
About 2 500 brown bears in Sweden, 700 or so in Estonia, 70 in Norway, 1600 in Finland.
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