When my daughter was two and I pointed out a bird in the garden saying “bird,” she said, “No, magpie.” That was surprisingly knowledgable. Toddlers often only know archetypal words: house, tree, dog, bicycle, window. When it comes to birds, some get stuck in that archetypal stage. Many still know that not every drift ice is a duck, but waterfowl knowledge rarely extends beyond swan, goose, perhaps coot and sometimes grebe.
Explanation for beginners
How many readers of this nature diary would know what a widgeon is? Or a teal? If you don’t have what those birds look like, the booklet is Nature book a nice start. It is a selection from the nature section of Willem Kolvoort and Gerrit Jansen The Gelderlander.
Kolvoort depicts almost a hundred birds and other animals, with Jansen writing an explanation for beginners. ‘The kingfisher cannot stand frost,’ he writes, for example. After fifteen years of journaling, I am perhaps so familiar with such tidbits that I have come to regard them as common knowledge.
Recognizable, but not realistic
But it might well be that three-quarters of the Dutch have no idea what a kingfisher looks like, and when they hear the name they think it is an arctic animal. If that idea has occurred to you, even for a moment, you might want to check out this booklet. It’s fun for kids too: it can help maintain their toddler-like know-it-alls.
The widgeon is also in the booklet, and both teals (the summer and winter teal). They are beautiful animals. Kolvoort depicts them recognisably, but not realistically. He often gives them an oversized head and two round eyes, also in side view, like a Picasso après-la-lettre. Like the kingfisher in the picture and the fish he catches. That fish, I’m guessing a bitterling, gets no explanation as an extra.
Three times a week, biologist Koos Dijksterhuis writes regarding something that grows or blooms. Read his previous Nature Diaries here.
