Column | Nice scented females

Not only the Malieveld colored red on Sunday. Also on the highest mountain in Drenthe, just outside Wijster, a sympathetic mini protest for Gaza seemed going. The cyclists on the Col du Vam (‘4800 centimeters above NAP’) were all wearing a bright red shirt – they quickly moved over the asphalt in a smooth line.

At the top of the former garbage dump was a flat pattern. Picked too early. The larvae, the ‘Engerlingen’, were subsequently pupated under the ground after their many years and flown out en masse during the warm, dry days at the end of April. First they had enjoyed fresh green oak leaf; Now the battle for offspring had erupted.

In the Drenthe bungalow where I spent the night, the Meikevers typed on Saturday evening as noisy kamikaze pilots against the window. Flying males that scanned the sky with their fan -shaped antennas, looking for nice scented females. In the morning I found them soulful in the garden and along the road. Surfed, drowsy. Table cover for the starlings and the blackbirds. Nature is always a battlefield, but a little more in the spring. Testosterone bumps who defend their territory, group rapes, parent birds who drag prey to one All you can eat-buffet.

The cyclists started the descent; Further on, a herd of sheep grazed. Almost a century ago, De Vark Waste Maatschappij was founded here at Wijster to bring waste from the Randstad to Drenthe. Everything would compost better on the poor sandy soil: a statement that somewhat smelled of one Not in My Backyard-excuse. Nowadays there is another waste processor active, but the name VAM-Berg has remained.

A raven, symbol of death and destruction, floated above the Col du Vam. An omnivore that undoubtedly hoped for something edible – part of the belt could then be asphalted for the athletes, further on the plastic packaging was open and exposed. I thought of the ravens in the Veluwe, which it was recently discovered to produce fallow balls full of plastic: pieces of garbage bag, the string of a dry sausage. In fact, the Veluwe Raven had been sailed to find out their collaboration with the local wolves: it is known from the United States that Raven are tracing prey for wolves, after which they can communicate in the loot. But the track led instead of a pack directly to a garbage dump along the A1.

Raven as death seams, Meikevers as suicide commands: in the light of the large -scale military exercise that took place during my stay in Drenthe, the nature struggle was given a grim touch. Above the Fochteloërveen I had seen dredged dragonflies flying that I only recognized after a few seconds as helicopters of the Air Force. Falcon Spring, Valken Spring. Would they know at the Ministry of Defense that the archen enemy of dragonflies is De Boomvalk?

From the VAM-Berg I cycled past the former organic station Wijster, where biologist Piet den Boer started in 1959 with what is now the longest-running insect count in the world. The research station itself is closed nowadays, but volunteers still go into the field every week to count running beetles. Beetles who can sometimes fly in spite of their name, as long as the circumstances are good. But it is precisely in that area that has been wrong in recent decades. The biggest threat to walking beetles is people: it causes, among other things, over -fertilization and drying out habitat destruction, causing species to disappear.

With special beetle benches – long strips raised soil, which heat up extra quickly in the spring – nature organizations are now trying to stop the decline. Although that is not only in favor of the beetles: the raises serve at the same time as a food bank for field birds. After all, they also have a hard time.

I finally cycled home along countless bone -dry trenches. Trenches in the landscape, the scars of another battle: that against climate change.

And nowhere a earthworm to draw a pink -red line.

Gemma Venhuizen Is a biologist editor and reports somewhere from the Netherlands every Wednesday.

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