Floral and faunal differences between Berlin and the UK
Thursday, April 29th, 2021 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manHere in Berlin I'm living 600 miles as the crow flies from my last residence (London), more as the Eurostar runs, and it's interesting to observe how similar the flora and fauna are to in the UK, and where the differences are. In fact, I've only spotted a few differences in total.
I spotted my first on my first visit in 2005: There are lots of starlings here; they do not seem to have been crowded out of their urban niche by pigeons the way they have in the UK.
The two most obvious differences are crows and squirrels. I'm used to the all-black carrion crow, but the crows here are hooded crows, with grey bodies but black head and wings. It turns out (from Wikipedia, of course) that Berlin is right at the westernmost edge of the range of the hooded crow, but you also get them in the far northwest of Scotland and in Ireland.
As for squirrels, it is well known how American grey squirrels have displaced the native red squirrels of the UK from most of their range. Despite living forty-two of my first forty-three years there, I have only ever seen a red squirrel in the UK once.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aviva_m, observing the behaviour of both myself and her also British ex, once remarked that you can tell the Brits in Berlin by the way when they see a (red) squirrel, they get all excited and run after it with a camera. (Red squirrels being considerably shier creatures than grey squirrels, it took quite a few years before this behaviour wore off for me.)
The first time I went for a bike ride out of Berlin into the Brandenburg countryside,aviva_m warned me, "Be careful; there are wolves in Brandenburg!" But despite much cycling around the countryside since, I have yet to see a single wolf, or indeed raccoon (Berlin is one of two areas in Germany where escaped populations of captive raccoons have gone feral).
I might also mention mistletoe, which is very common here, but which I don't think I have ever (knowingly) seen in the UK.
Lastly, the bumblebees and honeybees here might be different species; they look slightly different to how I remember in the UK. Indeed, whilst in the UK the majority of bees one sees are bumblebees and the minority honey (?) bees, here it seems to be the other way around.
I spotted my first on my first visit in 2005: There are lots of starlings here; they do not seem to have been crowded out of their urban niche by pigeons the way they have in the UK.
The two most obvious differences are crows and squirrels. I'm used to the all-black carrion crow, but the crows here are hooded crows, with grey bodies but black head and wings. It turns out (from Wikipedia, of course) that Berlin is right at the westernmost edge of the range of the hooded crow, but you also get them in the far northwest of Scotland and in Ireland.
As for squirrels, it is well known how American grey squirrels have displaced the native red squirrels of the UK from most of their range. Despite living forty-two of my first forty-three years there, I have only ever seen a red squirrel in the UK once.
aviva_m, observing the behaviour of both myself and her also British ex, once remarked that you can tell the Brits in Berlin by the way when they see a (red) squirrel, they get all excited and run after it with a camera. (Red squirrels being considerably shier creatures than grey squirrels, it took quite a few years before this behaviour wore off for me.)The first time I went for a bike ride out of Berlin into the Brandenburg countryside,
aviva_m warned me, "Be careful; there are wolves in Brandenburg!" But despite much cycling around the countryside since, I have yet to see a single wolf, or indeed raccoon (Berlin is one of two areas in Germany where escaped populations of captive raccoons have gone feral).I might also mention mistletoe, which is very common here, but which I don't think I have ever (knowingly) seen in the UK.
Lastly, the bumblebees and honeybees here might be different species; they look slightly different to how I remember in the UK. Indeed, whilst in the UK the majority of bees one sees are bumblebees and the minority honey (?) bees, here it seems to be the other way around.
