We discover why Amsterdam is a popular stop-over for migrating birds and why some exotic visitors which have taken up permanent residence are less than welcome.

Over the years Amsterdam has offered shelter and respite to many a traveller, from many a place. Today, the nation's capital boasts a citizenry comprising over 170 nationalities. The city is not only enormously varied in its ethnicity however, it is also home to a bewildering array of wildlife, providing for, among others, some 34 types of mammal, 60 types of fish and, most obvious in their abundance and variety in Amsterdam, 140 species of bird.

The waterways, parks and gardens of Amsterdam are teeming with bird life, sheltering amongst its feathered fauna the ubiquitous pigeon, the shy jay, the rascally heron and the twittering starling, thrush and crow, tit, gull, goose, coot, duck, moorhen and grebe.

Avian migrants

Eygyptian goose

Much of Amsterdam’s bird population, as with its human population, is made up of migrants. Some stay for a matter of days or weeks at a time, tourists almost, others stay a little longer, on annual or bi-annual visits and some, like the exotic ring-necked parakeet and the Egyptian goose, have come to Amsterdam and never left.

Wondering if Amsterdam’s robust ecological health was simply a happy accident I set up an interview with ecologist Remco Daalder of the Municipal Planning Department (Dienst Ruimtelijke Ordening). What does the city do, if anything, to facilitate all this life? On what (economic) basis? Specifically I wanted to find out what made Amsterdam so attractive to the multitudes of migrants that make (temporary) homes here, whether the city explicitly planned for and enabled migration and what if any action was taken to counter observed negative side-effects of all this coming and going. Were there any parallels to be drawn with human migration and its management?  Daalder, infectiously passionate about his work and his city, explains that he and the five other biologists at the Municipal Planning Department, in co-operation with hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers, are primarily engaged in inventorying the green belts of Amsterdam and their denizens.

Natural insect control

According to Daalder, foreign investors have led Amsterdam to recognise the direct economic import of green areas in and around the city. Companies setting up on the Zuidas, for instance, regularly cite the importance of the proximity of both the Amsterdamse Bos and the Amstelpark as second only to the accessibility of Schiphol and Centraal Station in their decision to operate from Amsterdam. A second tangible and economically advantageous aspect to city green, he continues, is the cheap and eco-friendly purifying of air (trees) and water (reed beds etc.). Further, clean air, clean water and plenty of foliage mean that healthy bird and fish populations provide a cheap, efficient and biologically inert means of controlling insect levels in the city. A single swift, which migrates yearly between Amsterdam and North Africa, spending its summers in the same nest in Amsterdam year in year out, consumes upwards of 8000 mosquitoes per day.
 
Are there any facets of the city’s green infrastructure specifically designed to discourage bird migration? On the contrary exclaims Daalder, holding forth on initiatives such as the inclusion of nest boxes for swallows and swifts in new residential developments, the manmade sandbank in the IJmeer (on which, at peak times, upwards of 50,000 geese and waders can be seen resting before continuing southwards) and explaining how, also on the advice of the department’s biologists, one half of the Diemerpark to the east of the city has been allowed to grow wild, resulting in an impenetrable thicket which provides temporary sanctuary to throngs of migrating song birds.
 
Amsterdam central on migration path

Amsterdam: a hub on the migration route.

But what brings these migrants to Amsterdam in the first place? Some song birds are following insect populations that move with changes in the weather replies Daalder. Many of the more exotic ducks to be seen in Amsterdam come south while their summer haunts are frozen, stopping as soon as they are out of reach of the encroaching ice. Most significant however, my interlocutor continues, is that Amsterdam is located at the centre of a bottleneck on the most popular route to the south for a variety of migratory birds from a huge area to the north and east of the country, stretching all the way to Siberia. These birds prefer not to fly over open sea and thus follow coastline until they reach the IJsselmeer where the Afsluitdijk just does not represent enough solid ground underfoot so that they follow the coast of the inland sea south, fly over Amsterdam and then follow the Noordzeekanaal to the ocean. Amsterdam’s pivotal position on another type of route down through the years, the commercial route, has been instrumental in engendering its multifarious ethnicity.
 
EU regulation plays a part

The advantage to Amsterdam of its location on commercial routes is obvious, however, why does the city (or the state) make so much of ensuring migratory pathways for birdlife? The ecologist is enthused and explains that there are agreements at European level which oblige The Netherlands to provide for its wildlife, both indigenous and transitory, agreements which were arrived at due to initial agitation from the Dutch government. Failure to provide enough sanctuary (either in numbers or surface area thereof) results in fines and admonitions from Europe.
 
Undesirable migrants from the depths

But doesn’t all this to and fro cause any problems? Yes, on occasion. Daalder explains that two relatively recent sub-aquatic introductions, the spiny-cheeked crayfish and the Chinese mitten crab, are viewed as destructive undesirables. The crayfish somehow turns any body of clear healthy water that it takes to into an oxygen-starved pool of murk within a few short years. The mitten crab is less pernicious for its own direct environment; it damages fishermen’s nets with its powerful claws. Eradicating such newcomers, once established, is however fiendishly difficult and Daalder tells me that such a course of action is generally not considered as a realistic option.
 
Green parrots accepted as ‘fully integrated’

Ring-necked parakeet

I asked him if there weren’t those who object to the success of some exotic migrants. Like the conspicuous ring-necked parakeet for instance? Of course, some people cry eigen vogels eerst replies Daalder with a grin (Play on nationalist slogan eigen volk eerst – Holland for the Dutch – but referring to birds, vogels), but not the Amsterdammers. The people of the town are generally enthusiastic about “their” parrots, pointing them out to visitors with a touch of pride. The ring-necked parakeet was first introduced in 1976 by a pet owner in the city who was, so the story goes, so tired of the birds’ piercing screeching that he simply let them go. Initially the parrots’ domain stretched no further than the Vondelpark but these days they can be seen (and heard!!) pretty much anywhere in the city, having achieved a population of more than 2000 birds in the intervening years. There is however little danger of their numbers growing to troublesome proportions Daalder assures me, the goshawk, indigenous to Amsterdam, has recently discovered that the bright green parakeet is good to eat. In any case, he concludes, the bird didn’t ask to be brought here and their offspring certainly don’t know any better!

No human comparison

Daalder does however feel obliged to object to my search for parallels between human and animal migration, and to my efforts at comparing the respective merits of their management, as simplistic, stating that human migration is much more complex than animal migration, that like is not being compared with like. Birds have no notion of borders or nations or states and are blithely unaware of, and utterly unconcerned by, these human constructs, they are moved by instinct or fate and make the best of it, or not, along the way. Of course he has a point. At the same time, are not many human migrants also, ultimately, very much moved by fate or instinct? How much of a plan does the African man have as he clambers onto that unsteady and overfull boat? How much of a plan does the Chinese woman have as she steps into that shipping container?

The policies designed to manage animal migration are based on the recognition of migration as an inevitable, and vital, if regularly problematic, element of the hum and buzz and bounce that is life in Amsterdam. Is there truly nothing to be learned from this in our efforts at managing human migration?

7 July 2007

Writer Ciarán ONéill also translates texts from Dutch to English.

Photos by Ciarán ONéill.

[Copyright Expatica 2007]