A somewhat older man is now busy with a kind of clamp on the cricket field. He is a volunteer at the club. “I also worked here for 35 years!” He points to a series of molehills on the edge of the field. “We don’t have much problems with it other years,” he sighs. “But yes: as long as they stay on the edge, there is not much going on.”
Molhopen on a sports field are a nightmare for athletes. You can just get a big injury if you get in. The man with the mole clamps tells about the large group of storks he saw a day earlier.
“We recently felt the field and we have sown the grass. Of course they come to that!” By that he means that the grass is aerated. This all creates small holes in the soil. That is good for the roots of the grass, which thus get more oxygen, water and nutrients.
Nest with storks
It doesn’t matter that all those birds roll off the cricket field. “They don’t eat the grass seed, you know. It’s nice. That stork nest is only a few years away. And it is the first time that there is really a nest in it. Go, go and look, it is not far. Yesterday there were much more here, no idea how they know that there is something to get.”
The Stork Nest on a meadow on the Lage Duin and Daalseweg is quickly found. It is just as empty, the storks that nest there are still on the cricket field.
Text continues under the photo.