May 19th, 2013 was an historical moment in the history of European ornithology. Four Iago Sparrows (Passer iagoensis) arrived in The Netherlands from the Cape Verde Islands aboard a ship, named Plancius. They are the first know individuals of that species (endemic to the islands off West Africa) to have reached Europe. As the ship […]
Tag: The Netherlands
For the birds: “Hoe hoe hoe”
While in Japan Professor Yukio Hirose worries about pigeons pooping on statues, in The Netherlands a young man is making a musical stink about the high prices being paid for racing pigeons. He, the young man, expresses himself in this song: His plight is translated, both in language and context, for people outside the Netherlands, […]
Dutch bug-splatter-on-cars count
This graph shows seven days of bug-splat data. The bugs splatted onto the license plates of automobiles traveling in The Netherlands. The graph is color-coded to show approximate time-of-day when the splatting happened. It’s part of the Wageningen-University-based SplashTeller project. BONUS: Mark Hostetler was awarded the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in entomology for his scholarly book, […]