Ideas from the Front Page

[Katinka]

P.S. for today!
Looking onto the LK mainpage sigh! Jõgeva ümbruses once again, in Estonian only. I think it could be one of several people's favourite columns, like Kristel Vilbaste's observations. But who else if not Liis is the only Estonian LK translation's volunteer

[Katinka]

Seenenäitus, seenenädal, seened...
Now it can become autumn! I was and am looking forward to the English translations on any mushroom article again...
But what about this large one?? Nädal metsas... from Sept 8 -
Now something "for" the translators. Thanks for publishing the article about bidens tripartita - trifid-bur marigold: I had picked this plant from the river bank here some days ago but couldn't find it with my very common plant book... In Germany one uses the "Schmeill-Fitschen" for more professional definition.
"Action in hazelnut groves" - here we also seem to get an abundant (thx for the word!) maturity of hazelnuts. Also a hunter told me of the coming acron mast. In the regional radio programme it was said today that land owners and hunters are more and more concerned about how to manage the huge occurances of boars. The animals can find every kind of delicious food here - incl. the increasing number of corn fields, like the "land of milk & honey".

[Katinka]

A new kind of frontpage article...and translated into English by Silver?! Aha - I came across him earlier. Good to know. More critical feedback to nature-near issues by EOÜ and others, please...
Preventing window collisions by birds An important (and although still underrated) issue! Even me I have been witness for that so often in cities. For the Tallinn modern skyline it's an urgent concern, no doubt. At the same, every window on a certain height of a building is a significant danger for birds. You have told all the prevention aspects worth knowing, so far.
More about "Bird strike" in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike
(I wish I wouldn't come across Wikipedia so often to give more to read)
But be aware of not so nice pics in it...
The German version distinguishes the meaning of "strike" more differenciated and contains the chapter "static objects" - windows.
See also the topic auf Deutsch viewtopic.php?f=45&t=300

[macdoum]

It is very easy to prevent birds flying against your windows.
Don't clean your windows during the birds active season

[Liis]

Roses and rose hips
A somewhat different use for the hairs or bristles that you painstakingly clean out of the rose hips, from advice to Aronia (Aronia x melanocarpa, A. prunifolia) growers: dry, blow into vole holes; the voles hopefully will find the itching as unpleasant as we do and move.

Although they might find eating the seeds - unless they are separated off - worth some itching.
What do rose hip syrup, soup etc manufacturers do with the hairs: itching powder can't be a very big sales item?

(Google search shows that for commercial rose hip products in Sweden today the hips are picked in Chile ... )

[macdoum]

Liis,many thanks for all your great translations & etc;

[Liis]

Hooded crows and others moving around
http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/18332
Some go, others come.
Lately quite many birds have been described where the "Estonian" ones move south- and westwards and are replaced by their relatives from the north and east.
So how come?
It seems that this migration is not absolutely neccessary in terms of survival - too cold, no food - but rather a luxury movement to a more pleasant winter climate, at least as seen through human eyes.
Are Estonian crows "softer" and more spoiled than the northern arrivals?

A remarkable invasion too, seeing the numbers given: summertime nesters, 5000-7000 pairs, meaning some 10000-15000 birds - incoming winterers up to 300000 birds. 10-30 crows for each summertime one.

[alice44]

I had a roommate who had studied Bald Eagles along the Chesapeake bay in Massachusetts and they do the same thing, they all sort of shift southwards.

[Katinka]

By chance I just come across the new LK article (in English issue) from Dec. 2 - great to read these lines from Tiit Lepik, the LK's mushroom timelapse man from 2011!
Again something with a different content than "usually" which I find good for readers from abroad.
But what I'm wondering about is - Palmse as the FIRST National Park of Estonia??
I have a source that says something better: first year formally should be 1935:

Estonia's first Nature Conservation Act came into force on 17 December 1935. It was drafted by Teodor Lippmaa and Gustav Vilbaste.

I had copied it from an article in http://www.keskkonnaamet.ee from 2010, now not accessible any more.
And what I kept in memory since, is that on Estonian territory we have the oldest NPs in Europe.

If interested I could send my doc in pdf form to somebody here.

In my German federal country currently there are the beginning steps to vote (politically) for the FIRST NP... Beside a second f. c. we have the largest parts of forest regions of all the f. c. (more than 40 %).

[Katinka]

Tere õhtust...
What a nice little surprise about another English translated article (so do I read them first, due to the procrastination in the translation process - I am sometimes unpatient) from Tiit Lepik. It matches very well to my sympathy for proverbs. Liis aitäh for the imtranslator.net Link!
Nature doesn't need us but man is addicted to nature. Yesterday evening I took part on a meeting of "Friends of the Earth" (my regional group). Amongst others, we listened to a presentation of the great "Wildcat man" of our forests, as RL-P gives more than 50 % of the German population a "home" (600 to 800!!).
One saying was "We have to give nature a voice - our voice".
I say: each LK article does that on its own way.
What a pity not to understand enough to listen to the quoted YT link of Tiit, TEDxTartu. But sounds impressively...

[Liis]

Tere õhtust...
What a nice little surprise about another English translated article (so do I read them first, due to the procrastination in the translation process - I am sometimes unpatient) from Tiit Lepik. It matches very well to my sympathy for proverbs. Liis aitäh for the imtranslator.net Link!
--------------
What a pity not to understand enough to listen to the quoted YT link of Tiit, TEDxTartu. But sounds impressively...

http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/18604
I was rather fascinated by the varying relative values of the caught and to-be-caught birds in different languages, who they were, where they were sitting: sparrows, cranes, hens, eggs ...

Birds: a rather nice translation from Google translate about treecreepers
Porridge is mostly a place for our birds (Google T) -
Enamalt jaolt on meie porrid paigalinnud (Estonian original) -
Our treecreepers are mostly sedentary - reasonable translation
They will not be hungry at least in the porridge with GT ...

The third jackal was shot in Estonia today. Still not clear where they came from, or how.

[Katinka]

Dedicated to the latest LK article from yesterday - http://www.looduskalender.ee/node/18727

Ooh so amazing!
All that categories that were awarded...the pics let my phantasies come up
I wish I were a bird
no... a snake
no... a butterfly or the caterpillar
no... a plant

More time for philosophizing during the winter holidays?!

A big aitäh for their creativity to the ones who are familiar to me -
Kristel Vilbaste
Kaido Haagen
...not to forget to say for unnumerous moments of shiny eyes here on the LK frontpage,
Mr. Skromnov & all his Mainzelmännchen !

[Liis]

About goshawks http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/18768

A young goshawk visited a 7-Eleven store just outside Stockholm City centre the night before Christmas Eve: VIDEO
It flew around for an hour, crashing down tins and packages from shelves, before a brave customer managed to get a blanket over it and take it outside.
Police were in place with helmets and shields.
An ornithologist explained that caution was called for. If you are careless on handling it, and it gets a grip on you, its claws can easily go through heavy-duty gloves (and right through your hand): goshawks kill their prey with feet and claws.
(Video linked above is from the store's monitoring camera).

[Katinka]

Referring to the post of Luz4711 from today, here in this English-orienated thread: for everybody.

GEMA and YouTube in Germany! Yes, every EU country has its own acts for YouTube publications...So far! It was to hear that "the EU" will introduce unified standards for...

Tiit Lepik has published his video stream of the "Opening night of Ringed Seal Year" here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWdyHbUjeCQ. A valid link for to watch nearly 2:30 hrs from that evening in Tallinn.

[Katinka]

From LK frontpage from Feb 10, the original (http://www.looduskalender.ee/node/19162) Estonian article by Arne Ader - showing a bottle that shall collect a certain liquid from a tree??
Anyway, again a good map there showing the actual snow "heights" to us.

[Liis]

Rushlights and famine bread, peeruvalgus ja aganaleib

From Rein Kuresoo's first-page story of the General and the waxwings.
Beautiful photos, even more beautiful in his blog http://www.animalcity.eu/kuresoo/, and a fantastic story.

3rd paragraph down : [about people of old] ...they shouldn't have had to eat famine bread of grain husks, lit by rushlights
For aganaleib dictionary says tamely bran bread. Which is healthy, full of fibres, minerals,vitamins and whatever is good for you. However, proper famine aganaleib was nothing like the nice Internet recipes today. It contained a good deal of the real husks of the grain: the little straw-coloured, hard, prickly shells, often with a sharp little spike or two. When threshed off, they become chaff and might possibly be given to animals these days. Real famine bread was to be kept away from flames or it might burn.

Peerg, as in peeruvalgus is a long, thin sliver of wood, preferably pine or spruce, held roughly horizontally and burning to give you light, for some 5 minutes.
When I searched last time I never found the proper English word for it (and it would probably not have been understood anyway ... )

Can anyone help? Anybody in museums?

Rushlights are actually somewhat different: the white pith (core) from long stems of rush (Juncus sp.), where the outer green layer has been peeled off except for a thin strip that holds your core together, and then dipped in molten fat. When the fat has solidified the "stick" is used to burn for light.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight!
People evidently still make them, for fun hopefully. Burning = light time** roughly as for the wooden splinters.

EDIT:
**Just saw that burning = light time of a good rush can be up to 30 mins. So why were they not made, plenty of rush (Juncus) in Estonia. Guesses: peeling is tricky, takes time; they were fragile, could not be moved around when lit.

[Felis silvestris]

I'm just working on the German translation, doing it with a big smile ...

For your two problem cases, my Eesti-Saksa Sõnaraamat (a slightly oldish edition from the library) says for "aganaleib" the German equivalent "Kaffbrot". I found only a mention of a German saying: Eigenes Kaffbrot ist besser als fremde Semmel (own Kaffbrot is better than someone else's roll/bun) - http://www.zeno.org/Wander-1867/A/Kaffbrot - and explains it as bread with grain husks.

For the "peerg" the Sõnaraam gives the explanation Kienspan and searching for it I found this: http://www.derlichtermacher.de/html/der_kienspan.html and http://www.pp-mittelalter-shop.com/allt ... alter.html. Scroll down in the second one. English would be kindling, pine(wood) chip.

[Liis]

Here is some more:
The wooden splinters, peerud, had special holders mostly fixed to the wall. But if you had to go into some dark room you took the (burning?) splinter between your teeth. Better hurry up, it seems. And obviously beards would have been at risk.

Another source says there were not so many resinous trees - that would mostly be conifers - in England so rushlights were used instead of splinters http://ladyoflegend.com/lights/

The things one learns with Looduskalender ...

[Bea]

I remember my grandparents selecting the resinous splinters from their firewood - they took it to light the fire in the stove, my grandma refused to use an electric stove for cooking in the kitchen, she used the wood-stove her whole life long.
Even in hottest summer!

[Katinka]

Oh, I didn't come across the topic again before now - too little time -
Here a nice page hinting to and helping for preparing a survival:
from a German scouts' tribe -
look under "Richtig Feuer machen"
Alright, it's beyond the topic of Liis' translation...
But good for phantasy!