Last November I went with two friends for a long weekend to the island of Terschelling.
It is one of the “waddeneilanden”, a chain of smaller and somewhat larger islands stretching from the North West from the Netherlands till the South west of Denmark.
With 674 km2 Terschelling is not a really large island. It is known for its cranberries, the story goes that some barrels washed ashore in the 19th century and the finder moved it in to the dunes because he thought that there might be some alcoholic beverage inside.
We went there to run a half marathon (I finished in 1:32:47 a personal best). Before and after that we had time to explore the dunes and beach.
Sometimes, like two years ago, you can see some seals and if you are lucky, even a porpoise.
Not this time though.
After a nice hike through the dunes we reached to the North sea beach. At first we spotted a few starfish stranded at the beach. Later on my attention was drawn by large numbers of gulls diving into the surf. The group consisted mainly out of European herring gulls (Larus argentatus) together with some great black-backed gulls (Larus marinus, world’s largest gull), two quite common species in this time of the year.
So I decided to close in a bit a see what the attraction could be.
Soon enough I spotted a herring gull bringing something on land. Somewhat surprising there it turned that there was starfish on the menu! I have identified them as common starfish (Asterias rubens), species common along the shores of the Northern hemisphere.
Some of the gulls got company of a few sanderlings (Calidiris alba), apparently hoping for some scraps.
Sanderlings
Sanderlings are a common sight along the beaches in winter. These funny little birds follow the waves up and down when they reach the beach. They breed in the arctic like Canada, Greenland and Siberia. I noted that a few of them had some coloured rings at both legs. These rings make them easy to identify so more info about their survival, migration strategies, timing of the migration and the general behaviour of the species. This is a project of the Groningen university. In case you see one bird with colour rings you can enter the information at www.animaltrack.org. At this website it is possible to see the history of the bird. The two birds with coloured rings have been ringed close by Terschelling and so far only been seen on the shores of the Island.
