My interests as a lover of the outdoors lie primarily in birdwatching, and even before I landed in Germany, I was eager to learn more about the local Vögel (birds). Although there are some European birds with which many Americans will likely be familiar, such as the house sparrow or the pigeon, Europe’s ensemble of backyard birds are entirely different (although some may be closely related to American cousins). It was a thrill to me to spot even the most common or mundane bird.
Anyone can be a birder!
Two different resources ended up being incredibly useful with acquainting me with the birds of Germany. The first, the Merlin app, has been an old standby of mine for years. This tool, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, allows you to identify an unknown bird you saw based on physical characteristics or a bird song/call based on a recording. I use Merlin wherever I go, including at home, but I find that it really enhances my experience when I travel to a new place.
The second resource, a list of German birds by the conservation charity NABU, was incredibly informative. Knowing the German names of many of these birds allowed me to communicate more freely about my observations. It is also worth noting, animal vocabulary is one of my favorite things about German! A lot of animal words are, in fact, very descriptive compound words, like die Schildkröte (shield toad – turtle or tortoise), or das Eichhörnchen (small horned oak creature – take a guess what that one refers to!). Of the German bird names, there are plenty of fun, memorable ones, but my personal favorite is the wren’s, a nondescript bird which is proportionally louder than a rooster but about half the size of my fist and enjoys nothing more than singing from a tree branch from dawn til dusk: der Zaunkönig (fence king).
Transatlantic feathered families
What I found very interesting about the birds I met in Europe was the way that they reminded me of birds at home. This would make sense from an ecological perspective, as birds of similar families would likely fill similar niches in their respective geographic ranges. One example of this is the Eurasian blackbird (die Amsel), which, somewhat confusingly, is unrelated to North and South American blackbirds, like orioles and grackles. Rather, the Eurasian blackbird is in the same family (thrushes) as the American robin (not to be confused with the unrelated European robin — a flycatcher– but I digress), and a clear familial resemblance can be drawn between their behaviors and low cluck-cluck-cluck calls vocalized between mouthfuls of bugs. Another example of this would be the tits (die Meise/-n), a small, hyperactive group of birds which are very closely related to North American chickadees and titmice and share similar calls and behaviors. (The English word “tit” is an archaic term for a small bird.)
Other interesting birds to keep an eye out for in Germany
The common wood-pigeon (die Ringeltaube) was certainly a new and interesting bird to get to know in Europe. These large, purple doves reminded me of a standard city pigeon (whose name in German, Straßentaube, means street-dove, by the way), only a whole lot thicker, and their ubiquity meant that I was listening to their noisy, occasionally unsettling song from the wee hours of the morning to late into the evening. At a certain point in my trip, I noticed that I preferred to take pictures of statues to highlight their utility as perches for wood-pigeons rather than for any aesthetic merits of their own.
Corvids (crows, jays, and their cousins) are another common group of birds that always brought joy to my day. This family of birds are well-known and beloved for their intelligence, ingenuity, and sense of humor, and luckily, they are quite easy to find; a peer even remarked to me at one point that it seemed there were more crows than pigeons in the city. Although I cannot confirm the veracity of such a claim, they seemed to be hinting at the wide variety of local corvids. Magpies (die Elster) in dramatic petrol-blue-black and white are by far the flashiest of the corvids, but Eurasian jays (der Eichelhäher), with their mauve bodies and blue accent feathers, are the most colorful (and in my experience, more reclusive – it took me a while to see one). As for crows, I saw three main types: the carrion crow (die Rabenkrähe), looks no different than any crow I would see at home, but they make different sounds, so that is interesting to me. On the other hand, the hooded crow (die Nebelkrähe – mist crow) wears a mantle of gray feathers that resemble a hood and are quite entertaining in my opinion. Not to be outdone, however, are the jackdaws (die Dohle), which resemble small hooded crows, with just as much personality as their larger relatives. If we left a window open during our lessons, a group of jackdaws would always be nearby to offer their many opinions and pieces of advice on whatever matter was at hand.
I hope that my advice encourages you to not only better appreciate your feathered friends at home, but also to seek out new ones during your travels!