Nature often doesn’t need more than some land, some water and, above all, rest. All this was readily available in a corner between the IJ tunnel, the A8 and the North Sea Canal. So a special area arose around the Noorder IJplas. Where large seagoing ships pass, the highway hums and the large fuel tanks of the Petroleum ports can be seen, you can also hear the nightingale sing. We are in the Wild North!
Natural North Holland at the Noorder IJplas – NH Nieuws
Het Wilde Noorden is the name of a recently released safari guide for Amsterdam-North that our guide of today Thijs de Zeeuw contributed to. “The Noorder IJplas is a large pool of fresh water, right next to the brackish North Sea Canal. So the water there is still a bit salty. A lot of fish go back and forth between brackish and fresh water, so this is a fish mecca!”, he says.
Unfortunately there is not much to see, because we do not go into the water. “It’s really too cold. That’s good for clear water, but bad for mammals like us.”
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Fortunately, there is a lot to see and a lot to hear around the lake. We see the largest and thickest elderberries and hawthorns ever. “Precisely because people don’t have much to do here, these trees can grow so big here.”
Empty shells
A little later we are puzzled when we see many empty shells on the bank side. They are eaten specimens of the brackish water beach shell. “That was originally a shell that does not occur in Europe at all, but that was carried from overseas in the ballast water of sea-going ships,” says Thijs. There are hundreds of them, but the question is who ate the shells. A rat? A crow?
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Thijs suddenly starts shouting out of excitement: “That coot! That coot!” A little further on, a coot swims away from us. “I just saw him empty a shell. Look: he still has the flesh of the shell in his mouth!”
Apparently, this clever bird has discovered that the high-calorie meat of the shell will help it through the winter. And good too! A little later we find an enormous mountain of shells, more than a meter in diameter and a good meter high – the top protrudes just above the water. “Mystery solved!”
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A little later we hear two nightingales singing to each other and we are convinced of the beauty of this natural oasis in the industrial port area of Amsterdam.