I'm going where the cold wind blows"
Where did you sleep last night - by Nirvana
This song has been playing in my head going over and over again for the last few days. I do not relate to the lyrics of this song, only these two lines. Why, you might ask? Since I remember, I have been totally in love with cold, ice and snow. I love gruesome weather with dark clouds, wind and big waves. Just a sun peeping through the cloudcover and I will go where the cold wind blows. I really do. Today I just 'leaned' on the wind, without falling backwards or forwards - I was completely alone with the landscape within miles! Nobody around, just the roaring wind, the waves and some birds.
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| Wind and sand in nature's own artwork at De Hors |
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| Mysterious light and wind on the young dunes at De Hors |
Gladly enough, I could walk efficiently again. When I visited De Hors on Sunday January 9th, I tripped and my right foot got twisted sideways. Walking was difficult and I had at least 7-8 kilometres to go to get back to the Campus. Still, I am pretty tough and I made it. At least the photographs were worth the trouble...
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| Sand structures and pioneer dune grass |
Meanwhile, my internship is developing into a real research project about group behaviour of harbor seals in relation to group size during haul-out. Hauling-out is the typical behaviour of seals going on land (rocks, mudflats, sea ice or even log booms). In the Wadden Sea harbor seals usually haul-out on tidal mudflats.
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| Mudflats create artistic sceneries |
I spent my time at IMARES by going through 2000 videofiles of 10 days in June 2010, for weeks on end, deciding which videos are useful and which are not. The usefulness of the videos depended, for a start, on the tide: seals haul-out on mudflats at low-tide on the research location, so high-tide movies are not suitable unless seals are already making up for the low-tide. When water levels are decreasing, seals tend to stick their head and flippers into the air and rest their body on the mudflat that may be in reach already (so called banana behaviour due to the shape). Hauling-out is basically needed for rest and thermoregulation. The videos were made from one half hour before sunrise to one half hour after sunset.
The usefulness of the videos also depended on the focus of the camera, which was sometimes blurred, especially with myst, backlight or rain. And... the camera is supposed to scan 20 positions to get a view on the complete sandbank, but in some cases the camera didn't take the guarded tour and sticked to one position only. This was quite a job and I finally managed.
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| Seals are clearly not the only visitors of mudflats - duck trails |
After a while, I analyzed the data on scanning behaviour (watching intently), locomotion behaviour (moving around) and orientation/spacing on the mudflats. Now I have to finish my research paper, while still looking back on the wonderful walks of these last few weeks - even when my foot wouldn't 'work with me'. Let the cold wind blow, again and again and again!
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| Close after high-tide at De Hors |
