Poland wildlife and similar wild life where you live.

Białowieża is considered the oldest reserve in Europe. Unless somebody finds someting more ancient:

The first recorded piece of legislation on the protection of the forest dates to 1538, when a document issued by King Sigismund I the Old instituted the death penalty for poaching a wisent (European bison). King Sigismund also built a new wooden hunting manor in Białowieża, which became the namesake for the whole forest.

The forest was declared a hunting reserve in 1541 for the protection of wisent.

That's from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_Forest#History

And I remember reading somewhere, that the last aurochs (tur) was killed some time in the 17th century by poachers in Białowieża.

Oh, let's do the homework:
The last recorded live aurochs, a female, died in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest, Poland from natural causes. The skull was later robbed by the Swedish Army during the Swedish invasion of Poland (1655-1660) and is now the property of Livrustkammaren in Stockholm.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs

One of the pleasant things in the UK for me was both the similarity of the wildlife here and the subtle differences that made it even more interesting. Foxes on the streets are a sensation in Poland, common thing here. Meeting a stag beetle on a pavement in Bracknell made my day (or my night, as it was), since in Poland they are considered a rare species, and I never saw one ther. Poison hemlock right at my factory's fence made me check and recheck if this is not really a mistake. It wasn't. Tawny owl hooting regularly from the thin stripe of the Tube territory, amongst acres and acres of London suburbs. Bats almost hitting my windows in the London suburb. Rabbits, but no hares...

Is that a slug coming out of a shell or slipping out of it's skin like a snake?
I can't make it out.

Where and what is that?

Looks like a half Lobster half shrimp :)

Is that a newt?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt

Its 2 slugs making love :D


Its a crayfish in some freshwater.

I think this (click here) is the most sensual non-human cinematography I have ever seen, from the wonderful wildlife documentary Microcosmos.
There is also another one called Makrokosmos - winged migration both French and both extraordinary looks at nature.

but was i right? :)

Even a broken clock is right twice a day :)

Just kidding, I am knackered, gonna hit the hay, good night.

Stork in Poland

The storks, that have been nested on top of people's telephone posts, have grown up so quickly, preparing for their long journey.

It is considered good luck, here in Poland, to have a stork nest on your property, people even buy plastic ones to adorn their houses.

In Ireland, there is an old wives tale, that storks deliver babies by dropping them through the chimney.
Is it the same in Poland?

And I have started smoking again... after three years, the only positive side is I had not had the privilege of seeing the fireflies at night. I know they are only bugs with some kind of phosphorescent on their butts but still, they seem magical to me. And only appear around this time of year.

And I have never seen so many butterflies in my life, as I saw today, there must have been about 50 of the wee fellas. Most were white but others were multicoloured.

And another first, I saw a butterfly with that rainbow, oily, duck neck's thing, that changes colour depending on how the light hits it.

so... what are you smoking ?

LM :)

Hey, if you are not used to fireflies, they look magical.

on Tuesday, I was driving from Koszalin to Warsaw, on route 11, there are so many Stalk nests by the road side, maybe the draw is the number of lakes in the area for food, The stalk bird will always remind me of Poland

I spelled it this way, tried to google an image in Poland and got "advised" by google to spell it stork.

Are they the same bird? American Vs European spelling?

Wikipedia only has stork and stalking...

probably i did already mention it somewhere here, we don't have fireflies in TX, but i was catching them to a jar up north in Michigan...

and every summer when i was a kid in Poland south of Krk... :)

I have seen this done in cartoons ;)
Must look cool when you get enough of them.

magical, yes :)

Looking at the hits, it would seem " stork " is the correct spelling.

While on the subject of animals and insects in Poland, there is a special type of black lice, very common in PL forests, if it gets into your skin, you must go to the hospital ASAP. Anyone know the name of have pictures to show.

They are ticks and carry lyme disease
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease

They are usually pale green in colour , about one in four of them carry the virus...

If you go into the forest areas you need to check your body to make sure you don,t have any on you , then remove them carefully without leaving the head part in you...putting surgical spirit on the tick , or Vodka if you have nothing else will make the tick release its grip...

Then you need to keep an eye on the bite mark and look out for the bulls eye type red markings around the bite area that will show you have been bitten by an infected tick...

When full of blood they look like a small pea with a cluster of legs and biting bits on one side... you are safe enough if you remove the tick while its still feeding , its when its finished feeding it pumps the white cells back into you , and possibly the virus also...

You don,t feel the thing biting you , so its important to check your body for these things after being in long grass or bushes... These ticks are actually deer ticks , but they will be happy to bite cats , people or dogs .... nasty little critters...

Not only forest areas. We regularly find ticks on our cat. Gardens have them too. As you say, denatura or something like that does the trick. It gets the tick drunk so it loosens its grip (as we all know). When we come back from mushrooming in the forest we check each other carefully. A friend of mine is a biologist who works in Białowieża, and he got a tick bite which made him ill for weeks. He had to have a series of injections in his belly. Not at all pleasant. Tourists beware.

They are bloody EVERYWHERE this year.

Even in the bushes by our central, urban sandpit.

Be careful about the old meths/denaturat trick - avoid it if you can, especially if the tick has been there for a while and has managed to really get embedded. They release their stomach contents into the host's bloodstream in many cases.

My god-daughter went undiagnosed with bruceliosis (?) for 18 months, caught from an infected tick. If the area around the tick bite remains red or grows in the two or three days following a bite, see a doctor sharpish. A short sharp dose of antibiotics specific to bruceliosis should deal with the problem.

Edit: brucelioza = Lyme's disease. Dealing with the issue so often here in PL the English escaped me :)

Yes....don,t hang about , the sooner you get treatment for a bite by an infected tick , the better the chance of avoiding long term and possibly permanant illness that can really screw up your life...

I got bitten by one of these little bloodsuckers last year , but thankfully not an infected one...

Having a bald moment there. Borelioza.

Yes, two people I know have had three ticks this summer and I have known of no previous cases in all my time here.

Parasites and bacteria is an interesting twist to the wildlife thread.


Yes, I just found this out, in Ireland, we use oil to smear on the tick's arse, apparently that's where they bread through, although that could just be a funny way of putting it.

But a recent trip to the doctor's with someone with a tick said they may regurgitate into your blood stream.

As for Lyme disease, this has to be one of the worst descriptions I have read on Wiki, I mean how vague can you get??? :


Life cycle of a tick:


Is that true?

By pure accident, I have run into this page. Some nature lover, a bloodless hunter, shows his pics:
karetta.zdjecia.polska.pl

It seems so.... i read it on some science page.....

Before i went on my first trip to Belarus and Russia via the Baltic states i had an injection to prevent tick borne encaphalitus , as i was doing a lot of wild camping in the forests...not a pleasant injection , but not as nasty as the Rabies injection i had...

during my second trip i did not bother with all the injections , but i was a bit more carefull....

Yes if the tick gets distressed it can pump the blood back into you along with any virus , you need to be quick and efficient at removing them....

My cats get them quite often , so i have become expert at removing them just with my fingers...Oh , and if you do touch one of these ticks....wash your hands , you can get something nasty just by touching them...

I know the question is age old - but not it's not a newt it's just a common type of lizard 'jaszczurka' (there are three native species of lizards in Poland but one is not at all common (jaszczurka zielona = european green lizard)

Merged: Wildlife in Poland and the best places to witness them other than the zoo?

I was curios if Poland has any wildlife to speak of and in what regions would they be most populous.Is Poland teeming with wildlife?Does Poland have animals that are indigenous to there?

lol hang in here and you will get your answers:))

Golden-jackals-sighted-in-Poland

The most impressive wildlife that i saw in my life inside europe was close to Bialystok, in a city called Elk. I recommend.

Currently i live in Arabia and beside goats and scorpions there are not much of wildlife here.

Moose population have risen significantly in recent years.

Without going into detailed analyzes of the history of moose in Poland, it can be briefly stated that 2001 was a breakthrough year for this species. The Ministry of the Environment then introduced a moratorium on the shooting of moose, which resulted in a constant increase in their national population. While the estimated number of moose before the hunting suspension was approximately 2,000 in Poland, it increased to 10,000 in 2012 and last year it reached 34 thousand. It can be said that in the 21st century the number of moose in Poland has increased 17 times.

Amasing!

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Recently, three deer flew in front of my hood. I wouldn't want to meet a moose.