I am stuck at UvA at Nieuwe Achtergracht 166

It was unbearably hot last night.

And this morning too; it went up to 32 degrees in my place (which always is few degrees warmer than outside because of glass covering outside and no real aeration/ window opening etc).

I was sweating a lot; and for the first time I decided to leave home without any coat, with a t-shirt.

Swan Family
I first went to Oosterpark as I usually do in weekends before coming to the university to work. It is nice and relaxing to see ducks, moorhens, coots, geese and swans there. And I am glad I did it today since the swan couple finally had their babies! They were feeding the babies with weeds, and they did not mind when I got close and took the family photo.

Thunderrss!
I was working at the office,
and I have started to hear strange sounds from outside after a while I arrived. It is thunders and lightnings and rainings! Unbelievable! The exact opposite of the weather few hours ago! Alfonso is in the library now, and asked me to join. But how can I without any coats, any umbrellas, any raincoats?? Sara is also stuck in the university, this I learned via gtalk.

Word of my week: Cootling

Last friday, on the way to P-018 for the REC research seminar, Suzanne told me how she witnessed a heron swallowing a duck chick.

She used the word "duckling" to refer to duck chicks. I asked if it was the english name for it. "I don't know" she said, "I just use this word".

I verified this via internet. Now, I think that the chicks of coots should be referred as cootlings, to be consistent.

Birding in Amsterdam

I went to my place for a short while to meet Alfonso since he is going for a long holiday, and also to have my dinner.

I prepared a for-me-unusual salad for dinner:
mix of boiled/squeezed potatos, tuna fish, iceberg salad, tomato, and mix of olive oil, lime juice and pomegranate sauce..

I plan to go for birding in amsterdam this saturday. I guess birding more means observing birds with binoculars; but I will do it by naked eye. I plan to borrow a camera with optic zoom function to photograph them.

List of birds that I already knew and that appear around
Duck
Swan
Goose
Sparrow
Crow
Pigeon

List of birds with which I met here for the first time
Coot
Moorhen
Egyptian goose (in vondelpark)
starling
magpie
jackdaw
blackbird
heron

List of Birds I want to meet & see
Kingfisher
Eurosian Jay
Great Grebe

Some of these birds are already everywhere, and some of them are in the parks in the city; about 10-15 min. of cycling from the center of Amsterdam..

In this sense, this is unbelievable for Istanbul. You can go to a distance of 15 min. cycling from a central place, and you see all of those birds? No way! ...

I was checking the turkish names of some of these birds; and just few minutes ago; I realized that starling was actually "Sığırcık" !!. I heard the name of this bird many times in stories, novel; but never seen it. The name in turkish means "little cattle"; so I always had strange imaginations about the bird. However, it is just a small cute bird!


I also found this very interesting video on the internet: the dance of starlings: from Kutahya in Turkey

Coots Revisited

Coot family on floating garbage revisited..
I have checked the floating coot nest in the canal passing under our REC building close to Halverstad bridge..

To my luck, it was the time where mother and father exchanged roles for food-finding to laying-on-the-nest. Therefore, I had the chance to see their chick again (the mother or father always lay on top of it. That's why my previous attempts were unsuccessful). It is bigger now compared to previous size.

And very surprisingly, there were 3-4 more eggs on the nest! That's weird. They already have one chick of 3-4 weeks old. Did the mother make new eggs again? Probably this is the case; there was no egg on the nest. Let's wait and see..

I managed to take a video with my mobile during the exchange event; but its resolution is so low that it is impossible to see how they exchange..

We were at "Coot Day-Care Centre" at Gaasperplas
Alfonso and I have cycled to Kruitberg (literal meaning: {gun}powder mountain) yesterday. This was my longest cycling experience. Routeplanner showed the cycling distance as 8 km. However, we have made a wrong turn somewhere on the way. I guess it was at least 9 km. It took about 1 hour to arrive at Maikel's place at 5 PM.

He cooked zucchini soup: very tasty!. I will ask for the exact recipe. The other dish was risotto with salmon and smoked trout. Again, a nice and interesting dish. I learned that risotto was an italian rice type with more round shape, and a higher capacity to absorb water.

We had a walk to the lake at Gaasperplas after the dinner in Maikel's place. He took us to the park, and we saw a lot of rabbits around in the park! Their sudden movements were very funny. This was the first time I saw rabbits in natural life.
Then we walked to the lake. There was one mature coot feeding three other younger coots. Then another mature coot with a younger coot appeared, and it started to help feeding all younger coots. Maikel said that probably this was a coot day-care centre. The mothers are at work, left their young kids to here, he joked. He added that probably the two mature coots are paid by government. I said "then these coots adapted themselves to the dutch system".Yet another interesting coot nest
This morning, while cycling to university through Mauritskade, I saw this coot laying on a nest on the wheel in the middle of the canal.

Jackdaw

Maikel told me that the crow-like birds with grayish head are not crows, but they are called jackdaw in english.

He said that jackdaws are the clever birds, not crows. And he added that jackdaws are actually smaller than crows. I put a crow picture below from wikipedia, to make the difference clearer.

And today, on our way back from R-Class meeting, Tjeerd told me that they are called 'Kauw' in dutch. I checked from wikipedia for the turkish name: it is not that creative: 'Kuchuk Karga', meaning 'Small Crow'.

Coot nest near Halverstad Bridge

On Friday, around 6 PM, I suddenly heard the emergency alarm, and then an announcement has followed in dutch, english, german and french saying that everybody had to leave the building.

At first, I was in panick somehow, remembering the fire in one of the buildings of TuDelft few days ago, but then felt relieved when I saw few other people on the stairs.

When I was outside and about to leave with my bike, I have noticed an eurasian coot (I checked the turkish name: sakarmeke or su tavugu -water chicken-, and the dutch name is meerkoet) nest on a floating surface on the canal. The parents even had one chick!.

A Day in Utrecht

Inge and Accidents
This Morning, Inge told me about the unfortunate traffic accident Hans and Britt had in France. Luckily, they were not injured at all. And she also told me an accident she had witnessed years ago: The woman in the car was crying after the accident "It was only a fly, it was only a fly!"; and later they learned that the driver wanted to send a fly who landed onto his hand away, and he just shook his hand; and this caused him to lose the wheel control. Luckily, there was not any causalty.

You never know, you have a life with everything proceeding in order; and suddenly in a second your day, your life changes completely...

2nd Days of Pasen and Pinksteren
Today, Margriet told me that she did not have any idea on why those holidays were 2 days. She joked that it could be because Netherlands is a religious country :)

Ijsvogel
At the end of our 40-minute walk in the woods (and almost in the wild), Tjeerd told me about ijsvogel and how beautiful it was. I later realized that that was the bird Maikel was talking about last week. It is from the same family as crow (Karga in turkish); yet it is so beautiful with blue and orange colors. Tjeerd told me that it can be seen in Oostvaardersplassen. I then remembered that Maikel had told me that they are also in east Amsterdam (referring to Huub).

And I have checked turkish name of the bird. It has a very funny name! Yalicapkini :) . And it looks that they are seen in Izmir.

PhD Comics
I liked today's PhD comics a lot!.


Holiday in Antarctica
Margriet told me that the only two countries she had not been are Australia and Antarctica. I considered the Antarctica part as a joke first. But then she said that there were rich people going to Antarctica for holiday, to walk around and to see penguins etc..

Herenveen
During my lunch in the coffee room, I read in the newspaper Dag that the futbol team Herenveen won the right to play in next year's UEFA cup. And I learned that Herenveen was a Frisian team.
I already knew that:
Ajax : Amsterdammers
Feyenoord: Rotterdammers
PSV: Eindhoveners (this was already obvious since Eindhoven is included in the official name of the team)

And I had read that it was in a way strange that The Hague, being the political capital of the country, was not in the 1st Leauge. But maybe this is also related to the fact that The Hague is not officially a city but a town. This, I learned from an episode of Laura Speaks Dutch podcast.

Rakshasa
I asked Kaustubh if there is any "God of Evil" in Indian religions, and he directed me to Wiki entry of Rakshasa.
It looks that it is not a god, but an evil spirit. It says in Wiki that Rakshasas are man-eaters with venomous fingernails, they feed on human flesh. How awful!

Two Little Ducks

We have started to have 20-minute walks with Tjeerd around WKZ. Yesterday, we walked through the woods across the hospital; really nice scenery. I learned from Tjeerd that 'weiland' is the dutch word for pasture.

Today, we wanted to take a different route in AZU direction. Just after having 100-200 steps, we heard bird sounds. Tjeerd said that the sound was coming from a manhole cover.

Managing to take the cover out, we saw two duck chicks in water about 70-80 cm deep. I caught them and put outside. They were so small!! They rushed to the stream nearby. We talked about feeding them, raising them, being their parents..

I have checked them in the afternoon, they were there, always moving together. I took a photo of them.