Category Archives: Biology
Leaving for Chile
As I write this I’m waiting for the first in a series of flights and ferries that will take me to Isla Grande de Chiloé in Chile. The waters surrounding this island are part of one of the most productive marine ecosystems on the planet, and harbor the largest known aggregation of blue whales on [...]
National Geographic Emerging Nature Photographer
As you may know I was nominated for the National Geographic Emerging Nature Photographer Award 2012 together with Joris de Raedt (Belgium) and Marten van Dijl (the Netherlands). This is a new award in the Netherlands and Belgium for “seriously talented photographers with proven contributions to nature conservation and awareness raising (…) meant to stimulate [...]
A Wise Little Owl
Dear reader, I’m afraid I have neglected you a bit these past weeks. A lot is going on behind the scenes and I will share it with you as soon as I can. Today, I will just relate the story behind the photo above, and I will follow up with two new photos from my [...]
Joris Kijkt: Maarten Loonen
This is the second installment of ‘Joris Kijkt‘ in Universiteitskrant Groningen, featuring biologist Maarten Loonen. Maarten studies barnacle geese and spends several months a year on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen for his field work. Since a quick round-trip to the Arctic didn’t quite, erhm… fit the budget, I photographed him while practicing another passion [...]
JEB Cover
This is the cover of the October issue of the Journal for Evolutionary Biology, featuring my photo of a smooth newt. It accompanies an article about crest evolution in newts. This goes to show how valuable a tool photography can be to you if you’re a scientist. Not merely as a means of collecting data, [...]
Garden Spider
Autumn has arrived. Large garden spiders (Araneus diadematus) are a common sight throughout the northern hemisphere this time of year, trapping insects like wasps and butterflies in their webs. After mating, a female grows large with eggs inside. She will lay the eggs in a protective sac and guard over them until her death later [...]
Russell Lande Receives the Balzan Prize
The International Balzan Prize Foundation just announced that the Prize for Theoretical Biology goes to Russell Lande. Russ is one of the most influential biologists of our time. He has been at the forefront of population genetics and evolutionary theory research. He was also instrumental in the conservation effort to get the northern spotted owl [...]
It’s a Barn Owl Family
Great news everyone: there are little barn owl hatchlings squeaking and hissing from the nest box! Two weeks ago I wondered out loud whether our male had found a new mate. It’s unusually late to start a nest for barn owls in this region. Even second clutches (meaning that the owls start another nest in [...]
The Fright of the Bell Towers
We share the house here with many animals. I think that’s a nice thing, but we have little say in it anyway. Bats, garden dormice and beech martens are frequent occupants, to name just a few (and of course there’s the wood mouse that lives in the kitchen), but my favorite has always been the [...]
A Night in the Forest
As you may know (if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook), I’m in Picardie, France, again after a couple of days in the Netherlands for the opening of my exhibit. I’m visiting my parents. Two local friends, Jacques and Stephane, who have incredible knowledge of the local wildlife, took us to a badger sett [...]
Fire Salamander – Take Two
When I was a little kid I had a toy fire salamander. It seemed like the coolest creature ever to walk the earth with its bright colors. I never imagined I’d just stumble upon it on the forest floor in France one day… Last time I went looking for fire salamanders in the middle of [...]
I’m outta here…
…that’s what this Eurasian nuthatch (Sitta europaea) must have thought at the sound of my camera’s mirror moving up. It’s quite remarkable how they’re already on their way out by the time my shutter opens, around 70 milliseconds! Nuthatches are pretty cool birds anyway. Fittingly called ‘boomklever‘ in Dutch, which translates to something like ‘tree [...]
Underwater with Wild Newts
Search for an underwater photo of a newt, and you will find beautiful images of… newts in aquaria. So, last month I set out to fix this and went on a little expedition to the north of France to make a unique underwater photo series of newts in their natural environment.
Cold-blooded Cannibals
Think of a pollinator and the first thing that comes to mind is likely a honey bee. Maybe a hummingbird or a bat. Flowering plants rely on these animals for sexual reproduction, and in return the animals get nectar or fruits. For many years pollination was believed to be limited to insects, birds and mammals, [...]
Scouting Pools for Newts
After an eight-hour drive I arrived in France this afternoon, where my friend Jeremy Upsal has joined me to get some cool photos of newts. The thing with newt photos is they always seem to be set up in an aquarium or on land, so my mission this weekend is to capture several species underwater [...]
Life As a Biologist
We’re wrapping up the work on our documentary about Mediterranean island lizards and we should have it ready for you to see in a matter of days! Meanwhile, Nate has created a fun little video blog about his fieldwork, in which we get our hands (and feet) dirty and enjoy the good life as biologists [...]
Formentera
For the past four days, Nate and I have been working like crazy on our film about lizards of the Mediterranean islands. We’ve witnessed and filmed some truly spectacular lizard behavior. Today was our last day of filming and we now have many hours of footage to edit. Despite our busy filming schedule I did [...]
Lumpsucker
As I write this I’m waiting for my flight to Spain, where I’m visiting photographer, filmmaker and biologist Nate Dappen of Day’s Edge Productions. Nate and I will work on a short film about the lizards inhabiting Formentera, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. I met Nate at the Nature Photography Summit earlier this year [...]
Moon Jellies Galore
Here’s a quick photo from diving the Grevelingen yesterday. The moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) ephyras are budding off en masse right now. They are everywhere! To give you some sense of scale, the jellyfish in this photo are probably between one and five centimeters in diameter, so you can imagine just how many there are [...]
Reconnecting the Rio Grande Valley
The natural environment of the Lower Rio Grande Valley has largely been lost due to fifty years of intensive agricultural and urban development. What’s left has been fragmented into small, unconnected patches of forest — so much so, that many people here have forgotten that they live in one of the most biologically rich environments [...]
Watch This Space
The past week has been nothing short of amazing. It’s been a week of being challenged, inspired and moved. It’s been a week of meeting people whom I greatly admire, working together with some of the most talented young photographers out there, and—better yet—making new friends. Together with twelve other students from around the world, [...]
Fire Salamander
I arrived in France today to spend the weekend with Sabine, Vera and Steven. Although this year’s winter was a long one and we all long for the sun, for once we were happy to find that the evening brought us rain. These are perfect conditions for the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) to come out [...]
Something Pure Is Fishy
As we walk into the restaurant I’m thinking: how nice is it for once to not have to worry. You know, about saving the planet and all.
Pipefish: Battle of the Sexes Reversed
I will never tire of observing pipefish. The one in this underwater photo is a greater pipefish Syngnathus acus, blending into the Japweed Sargassum muticum. It seemed quite confident that I didn’t notice it—until it discovered its own reflection in my camera’s dome port, that is. Then the little fish came out of hiding and [...]
Who’s Our Closest Relative?
Yesterday I made this photo of a green shore crab Carcinus maenas between transparent sea squirts Ciona intestinalis in the Oosterschelde. Which do you think is more closely related to us? Although these adult sea squirts, or tunicates, don’t consist of much more than translucent sacks with intestines, their larval “tadpole” stage exhibits all characteristics [...]
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