This image is from last winter. In January I was visiting Helgoland. It’s alway a wonderful experience being on that island in the winter, especially in January.
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Tag: north frisia
Travel Tuesday: I am sailing
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Travel Tuesday: on the beach
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Travel Tuesday: backlit northern gannet
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Travel Tuesday: having a argument
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Travel Tuesday: northern gannet
Image taken from the cliffs of Helgoland.
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Travel Tuesday: crab booth
This is a quite common kind of food selling booth. Despite it looks like a pop-up shop, it’s more permanent. In Germany, you can find these food selling booths nearly everywhere. They are selling ice-cream, fish rolls, French fries, bratwurst, döner, waffles and so on: food to eat while walking or simply standing beside the booths. Some of these kinds of food you could find everywhere, others are more regional like this crab selling booth or booths selling fish rolls.
The writing on top of the booth says: “fresh crabs daily” and “unpreserved”. While the writing in the lower right corner says: “not today” 🤣
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Travel Tuesday: in the harbor
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Travel Tuesday: when dry go back into the sea
Here we meet a cormorant. You know, cormorants eat fish and they catch fish by diving after them. As long as the water isn’t frozen, they stay and hunt. Because they don’t have the option to seal their feathers with grease to keep the feathers dry, they have to spread out their wings after a few dives to get dry again.
During winter, not only the water is cold, also the air is cold. But, a cormorant lives his life anyway. When getting hungry they have to dive after fish and get wet. Afterwards you can see them standing somewhere with spread wings for getting dry again. I guess, it’s a long time during winter.
This cormorant stood on the beach for a long time to get dry in mid January. For about an hour or so we were able to observe him, he stood there looking at the sea and kept in his place even when humans show up and came quite close.
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Travel Tuesday: the ferry is passing the beach
This ferry is called “Funny Girl” and used to sail between Cuxhaven and Helgoland during the winters for many years. It’s retired and a younger, more modern, ship called “Helgoland” is sailing that route since summer 2016 during the whole year.
Because of an accident on Dec. 31st 2017 in the harbor of Helgoland because of very bad weather the new ship was replaced by the old one to repair it.
Here, the Funny Girl is coming back from Helgoland and is heading to Cuxhaven harbor. The next day we entered the ferry for our trip to Helgoland 🙂
Jan. 14th, 2018
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Travel Tuesday: Hummerbuden
These colorful houses are some of the Hummerbuden (plural) at the harbor of Helgoland.
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Travel Tuesday: attack!!!
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Travel Tuesday: Uria
Consider this post as a follow-up to my post three weeks ago showing some northern gannets. Here we can see the same problem, I mentioned in that post: material from lost fisher nets is used for building nests instead of algae.
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Travel Tuesday: Knieper
“Knieper” is lower German for “Kneifer” which is the noun for the verb “kneifen” (to nib oder to pinch).
I stumbled upon the crab per incident on the beach of Helgoland. They live in the Northern Atlantic and the North Sea. They are able to bring some water in their body to be able to “breath” when outside the water.
Although, I knew this species, I never met such a huge one before. It’s size was approximately of a DIN A4 sheet of paper (~30×21 cm). According to wikipedia, that’s nearly the maximum size.
He was still alive and I don’t know, why he left the ocean. Maybe, he was originally caught by a seal and then left alone. Who knows. I was glad about the finding.
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Travel Tuesday: flying home
APS-C, 500mm (~750mm FX), f8, 1/320s, ISO 250, monopod
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Travel Tuesday: northern gannets
These little guys are preparing for their breeding season. They build their nests side by side on these small ledges. Different to other sea birds, gannets build nests. They use algae as nesting material. Nowadays, they also use wasted parts of fish nets and other plastic materials. While algae decay over time, the artificial material fish nets and such consist of, don’t decay. Instead, it’s a huge danger for fish, dolphins, whales and for fish-catching birds. The material can’t be bitten through when the head, a foot or a wing gets entangled by the material. In that case the animal usually has to die.
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Travel Tuesday: chatting neighbours
It’s mid January and the northern gannets are already preparing their nest for the upcoming breeding season. The warm light might fool you. After a quite mild winter they appeared very early. They use lost fishing nets for building their nests. Unfortunately, this is also a serious danger for them. Think of a wing, the head or a foot gets entangled. Than, no-one is able to help them. The cliffs are too steep for a human.
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Travel Tuesday: invasion of sanderlings
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Travel Tuesday: walk along the line
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Travel Tuesday: I see you!
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Travel Tuesday: fearless sanderlings
One can only marvel that these little birds are running so close in the surf to pull their food out of the sand. On the one hand, that they are not afraid of the waves and, on the other hand, that they even find food among the sand.
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Travel Tuesday: looking back
In this image you can see another part of the concrete wall saving the foot of the red sand stone cliffs of Helgoland from the sea.You can also see the higher parts of the only town (more a village) of Helgoland and the 4 landmarks: the chimney of the heating plant, the church tower, the lighthouse and the radio tower (left to right). Above the island we have a fantastic colourful sky. Try to guess the time 🙂 It’s 9:32 a.m.!! in mid January. I really love the colors.
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Travel Tuesday: come up to me
It’s always fun observing these small birds. They are walking up and down the beach. Most of the time they are in the surf zone searching for food between the stones, the washed up algae and other stuff. Often, it’s quite hard to see them properly because they are well camouflaged between all this stuff.
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Travel Tuesday: ruddy turnstone
The ruddy turnstone is a small wading bird. Here we have one in its winter habit or non-breeding plumage. They are running restless along the shore during the surf to find some food.
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Travel Tuesday: common seal
In the past, I’ve shown you some images of grey seals. Today, I have a common seal for you.
Common seals are smaller than grey seals. Males are approximately 170 cm, females 140 cm and weight 150 respectively 100 kg).
While grey seals are curious and sociably, common seal are shy and solitary. Grey seals are laying in groups together, while common seals keep a distance of 2 or 3 meters to each other, whenever possible. They are stressed when a sand bench is too full.
Gray seals get their babies during winter and they don’t cry when left alone by their mother for hunting. Common seals instead, get their babies in summer and these are the ones, called howler (abandoned seal pup).
While grey seals choose beaches for resting, common seals prefer sand benches for resting. But, sand benches are usually only usable during low tide. At high tide, the sand benches are usually under water. Other then grey seals, common seal babies are born with the ability to swim. Birth size and weight are 85 cm and 10 kg. So, that’s not a problem to react to high tide. They are fed by their mother for about 5 weeks and than left alone.
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