Voyage 361

The Netherlands has a coastline of over 451 km, wide open to the north sea. Much of its land has been reclaimed from the sea and is below sea level, not surprisingly its coastal wetlands make up some of the best birding hotspots, apart from the inland nature reserves. Close to 500 bird species are recorded in the country, much of them are waders and water birds due to its geography. As a non-resident birdwatcher it was not an easy task to locate the right bird watching spots, whilst ebird helped considerably, the rest was on me to explore the Dutch lands. Nevertheless, the country is much safer to explore and the good facilities such as birding hides at the right places, easy access to most reserves makes it a birder friendly country. I have explored two of the birding hotspots, the Texel Island and Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve. Apart from these, I found bird watching and bird photography can be interesting in the neighborhood city parks and also tourist places such as Zaans...

The diversity of tropical forest trees are predominantly  dependent on its natural seed dispersers. Perhaps this diversity among the trees is fairly maintained by the fructivorous birds and animals of the Dandeli forests. Four fruit-eating bird species, the hornbills, forest pigeons, barbets, parakeets and one fruit eating squirrel are collectively responsible for dispersing the seeds of many of the Dandeli's tree species. The giants including the near threatened Malabar pied hornbill, the vulnerable Great Indian hornbill, the Malabar gray hornbill, and Indian giant squirrel are often the unintentional farmers of the forest. The compelling story behind this is, after eating the fruits, the indigestible part such as seeds are regurgitated later. These seeds are dispersed by birds and animals beyond the fences raised by the mankind. This plays a vital role in the local ecosystem by dispersing the seeds and some of them sprout to later turn out to be trees. It is fascinating...