    
FAUNA: CREATURES BIG AND SMALL
As Poland's flora evolved, so did its wildlife, undergoing similar changes.
The country's fauna is made up of species that arrived in various epochs,
starting from the last glaciation. The number of animal species greatly
exceeds that of plants.
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The beaver is another species that has returned to Polish landscapes. Once very common, as proved by numerous place names deriving from its name (bobr): Bobr, Bobrek, Biebrza, Bobrka etc., in 1945 it numbered only a few animals, all of the Canadian variety brought to Scandinavia. European beavers came to the Suwalki region as they wandered up the rivers that flow from there to Lithuania and Belarus. Also, beavers from a breeding station in Voronezh, Russia, were brought to the Biebrza valley. |
 The beaver Photo: www.poland.gov.pl |
These skilful animals are called river architects, and for a good reason. They build dams to lift water and keep it in their lodges which can be up to two metres high and 30 square metres big. With its powerful incisors, an adult beaver can cut down a 30cm-thick aspen in about 15 minutes. Poland's biggest rodents, they live in rivers with riparian forests of willows and poplars. Today their population exceeds ten thousand. Bred in captivity, they are subsequently released. Beavers inhabit a variety of places in the country's lowlands and occasionally in the uplands as well.
Animals
of the Polish mountains
An area with exceptionally rich fauna is the Tatras. Mammals living there include the bear, lynx, wolf, otter, badger, deer and roe deer. Birds include the golden eagle, lesser spotted eagle, red kite, northern hobby, buzzard, eagle owl, a few species of owls, black grouse, capercaillie and hazel grouse. The most characteristic species in the Tatras is the chamois. It moves over the steep slopes with great ease, jumping from one rock ledge to another. Chamois resemble common goats, but their grace and elegant way of moving are reminiscent of agile antelopes. They represent the Caprinae subfamily which belongs to even-toed ungulates including such mammals as the roe deer, deer, girafe, antelope and buffalo. Well-developed leg muscles, hoofs with cushioned pads, a heart larger than in other mammals, and low weight all allow the chamois to climb easily even the steepest rocks.
Kozica (chamois). Photo: Fot. R. Czerwinski, www.poland.gov.pl
In summer, chamois stay in the alpine zone above the tree line, where
they graze on the hale (pastures). In winter, when the weather is harsher,
they go down to the two regiels, where they feed on conifer and broadleaved
twigs, mosses, lichens and dry grasses. A thick hair coat protects them
against sub-zero temperatures. In summer it is brownish-red with a black
stripe on the back, while in winter it turns brownish-black to absorb
more heat from the sun.
Chamois are most active at dawn and dusk. They give birth to single offspring
in May and June. Adult males live a solitary life while females and calves
form small herds. In the Polish Tatras, ten such herds have been identified,
which occupy the area along the entire main ridge. Four of them are "international"
herds living on both the Polish and Slovakian side.
Poland's chamois were taken under protection as early as in 1869. Since 1957, when only 77 animals were spotted, the Tatra National Park has been counting them every year. In late 2001 there were 70 chamois in the park, 25 in the High Tatras and 45 in the West Tatras. On the Slovakian side, they slightly exceed 200. The species is threatened with extinction.
Another symbol of the Tatra National Park is the marmot. These lovely rodents live in high meadows, forming colonies of about a dozen animals. They build elaborate underground burrows, sometimes dozens of metres deep, in which the whole colonies hibernate during winter. The marmot's body temperature drops then to just 4.6-7.6*C, with 2-3 breaths and 10 heart beats per minute.
Marmots feed on grass, herbs and plant roots. When the colony forage for food, one sentinel looks around warily, standing on its hind limbs and warns others with a whistling sound when it senses a danger. This is also an alarm signal for the chamois.
The Tatra marmot is slightly smaller and has brighter hair than the
Alpine marmot. Its population was dramatically reduced as a result of
hunting. For centuries their tallow was much sought after as a traditional
remedy. A few years ago the Bayer Company examined it and found it to
have no particular medical properties, yet there are still cases of poaching
the marmot. In Poland the animal has been under strict protection since
1869. Today, there are some 200 marmots in the Tatras.
The range is also home to about a dozen brown bears. Their synanthropization
is an increasing problem. Keen to experience nature, tourists sometimes
act irrationally, provoking wild animals instead of avoiding them. The
Park's authorities ask visitors to stay away from the bears, neither to
feed them nor leave any food in cars and throw to leftovers only into
special containers. Currently about a hundred bears live in Poland, which
is as many as in the entire European Union. After the war there were just
ten of them.
The largest refuge for big animals in Poland is the Bieszczady. In autumn the mountains see spectacular deer ruts. The stags from the Bieszczady, numbering about 1500, are the biggest in the country an have the most impressive antlers. The vast wilderness also supports some 60 bears, which outside this range and the Tatras can be seen in Poland only in the Babia Gora area in the Beskid Zywiecki. Deceptively ponderous, they move lightly and softly, capable of running up to 65 km/h at short distances.
The uninhabited Bieszczady provides shelter for wolves, once killed off but now under protection. Their population here is Poland's biggest. Wolves mainly live off deer, roe deer and elks. In search of prey, they roam from 10 to even 40 kilometres a day. They play a major role in eliminating weak and sick animals, though in winter they may attack sheep, therefore some local farmers demand that their population be culled.
The Bieszczady is also home to lynxes, wildcats, otters, eagle owls, foxes and a few extremely rare birds of prey such as the golden eagle and peregrine falcon. Particularly impressive are golden eagles, once common in lowland Poland and all across Europe. Today, as a result of intensive logging in the lowlands, they live mainly in mountainous areas. There are only 15 couples of golden eagles in Poland, found chiefly in the Carpathians. Their other nesting area is Masuria.
The golden eagle is up to 90cm long and weighs about 4kg, its wingspan exceeding 2.2m. It has dark brown plumage with a black tail. Only the head and neck are golden. Females are much bigger than males. The eagle hunts mainly medium-sized mammals and birds, grabbing them with its talons and dropping the prey from high above the ground. Then the kill is taken to the nest. The golden eagle also feeds on carrion and may live up to 100 years. When diving through the air, it attains a speed of up to 160 km/h. The bird nests on cliffs and in tall trees, with most pairs having a few nests which they change from time to time. A nest used for many seasons may be two metres wide and 1.5-2 metres high. The female lays two eggs which hatch out after 41-45 days. The eaglets stay in the nest for about 80 days. In Poland, the golden eagle is extremely rare and strictly protected. There are regulations that specify how close to the eagle's nest forestry and farming work can be done.
 Orzel bielik (white-tailed eagle) Photo: Fot. M. Czasnojc www.poland.gov.pl |
Poland's national emblem was probably modelled after the white-tailed
eagle, the biggest bird of prey in the country, found in the north,
mainly in Wolin Island and along the Baltic coast. Like in the case
of the golden eagle, not only the species is strictly protected,
but its nests as well. The white-tailed eagle is up to 95cm long,
weighs up to 6kg and has a wingspan of 250cm. Both males and females
have the same plumage: beige head and neck, dark-brown back, wings
and abdomen, and white tail. It mainly feeds on fish and water birds
like ducks, coots, geese and grebes, often supplementing its diet
with carrion. It nests in high trees, on rock ledges or directly
on the ground, on islets without any predators. |
Mysterious
bats
West Wielkopolska boasts an underground bat reserve, unique in Europe.
Dozens of kilometres of 30-50m deep concrete tunnels built between 1925
and 1941 by Germans provide winter shelter for a few thousand bats a year.
These fascinating though little known animals are the only mammals that
can fly. They appeared as early as 55 million years ago and have always
lived near human settlements. They don't build any homes but live in caves,
tree holows and attics. They sleep during the day and become active at
night. To get their bearings, they use ultrasonic echolocation rather
than the sense of smell or sight. They are extremely useful animals -
one bat can eat several thousand insects a night. Scientists know more
than 900 species of bats, of which 21 occur in Poland. The most liked
are the species that live near water bodies such as the common pipistrelle,
Poland's smallest bat, with a weight of just 5g and a wingspan of about
20cm, which eats some 1000 mosquitoes a night.
Of the 18 bat families, only three European ones can hibernate in winter.
Two of this trio - Vespertilionidae and Rhinolophidae - live in Poland
and both are insectivorous. When they hibernate, they are totally defenseless.
They lower their body temperature almost to that of the surroundings and
slow down their vital functions. This allows them to use economically
the fat that they accumulated in the autumn and wait until spring comes.
The bat is an unusual hibernator resembling a TV-set left in the stand-by
mode. It wakes up as soon as the climatic conditions change. When the
temperature exceeds the bat's tolerance range - becoming too low or too
high - or when air humidity drops, it moves to a more suitable place.
With a high body surface to weight ratio, keeping body moisture at a sufficient
level is crucial for survival. A hibernating bat cannot drink, so it has
to find a shelter with air humidity close to 100 percent, ideally a cave,
which also has a relatively stable microclimate and temperature. This
is why most Polish bats live in the Cracow-Czestochowa Upland, which abounds
in caves. One of them is even known as the Bat Cave (Jaskinia Nietoperzowa)
and the bats living in it include horseshoe bats.
In Poland's climate, bats may hibernate for about 180 days because this
is for how long their stored fat reserve will suffice. Five-six months
of winter (which for bats means lack of insects) are close to the creatures'
physiological limit of hibernation. For this reason, there are hardly
any bats living further north.
Facts
Bats have been regarded as ominous creatures only in European culture.
In the Far East, they are believed to bring fortune. The Chinese, for
example, know a talisman called wu fu, which stands for "five bats". They
have intertwined wings and heads looking at a tree of life in the centre.
For native American peoples, such as the Aztecs and Mayas, bats represented
gods, including the god of fertility.
All bats are protected. Suggestions to protect them were put forward
already in the 19th century when it was realized that they feed on forest
pests. In 1868 the autonomous parliament of Galicia made the world's first
draft of such a bill (which, amusingly, referred to them as birds), but
it was never passed. Today bats are under protection in almost all European
countries including Poland (since 1952). This was a necessary step as
their number dropped dramatically when pesticides began to be widely used
against insects, bats' staple food, and when old houses, forests and caves,
which always provided them with shelter, were destroyed.
Recently their population in Poland has grown, partly owing to a ban on
using some pesticides. This is also a good indicator of an improvement
in the condition of the country's environment as these delicate creatures
are very sensitive to pollution and observing them may be a kind of environment
monitoring.
Typically, bat females give birth to just one young. Pregnancy lasts about eight weeks, but depends on the surrounding temperature. In our climate, a mechanism has evolved to prevent the offspring from being born at a time when there is no food, that is in December. Females form nursery colonies in early May and produce the young by mid June. For the first few days, mother carries the pup with her, but then begins to leave it when she goes hunting. The young is always fed with her milk. Within 6-7 weeks it grows up, learning to fly and hunt. As July passes into August, the colonies disperse. During that time males live solitary lives.
Kingdom
of birds
406 species of birds have been spotted in Poland, including 220 species
that nest within its borders. Only one fourth of this number spend the
whole year in the country. Some northern species come to Poland for winter,
but most migratory birds, notably swans and storks, stay here for summer.
The most common birds found in Poland are the coot, great crested grebe
and mallard. Nesting birds that rarely fly off include 21 species of European
origin, 14 from the Arctic and 118 from Siberia. Others are southern species
which spend the winter sometimes as far away as in south Africa.
A real kingdom of birds is the Biebrza Basin, its wildlife making it one
of the most unique areas in Poland. It is Europe's most valuable peatland/marshland
and an important wildfowl breeding area on the continent, providing refuge
for 263 bird species, including 185 nesting species.
A stunning number of birds can be seen in the Biebrza flood plains both
in the breeding season and during the passage periods. In spring and autumn
dozens of thousands of geese, ducks, cranes, ruffs and sandpipers rest
here en route south. You can hear their fluttering wings, gaggling, quacking
and other noises for kilometres away.
For water and mud birds, the valley of the Biebrza is one of the last
refuges, as most natural marshlands in Europe have been reclaimed. This
area is also home to many birds of prey, which number here a record 25
species. Well represented are birds typical of the taiga and tundra. The
valley is their southern or western limit and some of them even make up
isolated populations beyond their normal range.
Out of Poland's 56 endangered bird species, as many as 21 nest on the
Biebrza. These include the bittern, greater and lesser spotted eagle,
dunlin, ruff, great snipe, wood sandpiper, western curlew, little tern,
short-eared owl and European roller. Their populations are particularly
big, sometimes among the biggest in West and Central Europe. A few populations,
like the 2000 breeding pairs of the aquatic warbler, a small singing bird,
are believed to be the biggest in the world. The Biebrza valley has over
twice as many ruff nests (about 300) as the entire Central Europe (about
140). Not a single nest of the great snipe is known in Central Europe,
while about 400 males of that species have been counted on the Biebrza.
One of the greatest attractions for bird watchers is the tooting of the
great snipe. The performance starts in the evening and continues until
late in the night. A tooting male stands on a sedge clump and does not
move for about half an hour, taking air in. Then he lets it out producing
a sound that you can hear for hundreds of metres. Finally he flaps his
wings and again becomes motionless. This is all to assert his territorial
rights.
Even more spectacular tooting is done by the capercaillie, one of the
biggest and rarest birds in Poland, living in places like the Sol Forest
(Puszcza Solska). Spreading their tails, capercaillies sing a song of
four different stanzas. During the last one they lose for a moment their
sight sharpness and hearing. Because of hunting, poaching and forest logging,
they have become extremely rare, their population estimated at a mere
few hundred. The capercaillie lives predominantly in spruce forests, while
its relative, the hazel grouse, is found mainly in mountain forests.
One refuge for the capercaillie is the Tuchola Forest, which is also home
to many other rare birds such as the black stork, black grouse and cormorant.
Another bird haven is Polesie, where you can spot the harrier, western
curlew, great snipe, black-tailed godwit, black grouse, short-eared owl
and crane. The Masurian lakes provide shelter for the grey heron, grey
lag goose, osprey and buzzard. Lake Luknajno in the Great Masurian Lake
District, designated a world biosphere reserve, is one of Europe's largest
nesting grounds of the mute swan. It also attracts an increasing number
of herring gulls, the biggest gulls nesting in Poland. with a wingspan
of 1.5m. Thirty years ago the country had just two colonies of these birds;
today their number and range have increased substantially.
Huge numbers of migratory birds nest at the confluence of the Warta and
Odra rivers. Some 200 bird species live in this national park on permanent
basis; half of them nest there, including many water birds whose colonies
are particularly big. The local population of the black-headed gull is
estimated at some 6,000 nesting pairs, of the coot - at 14,000 pairs,
of the mallard - at 2,000 pairs. There are also an impressive 500 cormorant
nests. The population of the grey lag goose is the biggest in Central
Europe.
Closer
to people
Many animals live in man-altered landscapes. Meadows are breeding grounds
for birds. Crop fields are home to mice, voles (especially field voles)
and hamsters. Partridges are still a relatively common sight. Country
and town buildings provide shelter for the house mouse, house sparrow
and swift, an excellent flier able to reach a speed of about 170 km/h
and resembling the swallow. Swifts are the third most numerous group of
birds living in Warsaw (after pigeons and sparrows) despite the fact that
they come from rocky terrains.
At country houses you can often see swallow nests. Swallows build them
from clay mixed with saliva. House martins stick their semicircular nests
to house walls, while barn swallows prefer farm buildings like stables
and their nests have elaborate entrances.
Some species have changed their habits and moved closer to people's houses
only recently. Birds characteristic of forests colonized towns: the starling
did it at the turn of the 20th century and the blackbird in the mid 20th
century, followed by the magpie. Similar tendencies are observed in the
case of the wood pigeon, kestrel and crow. In 1943 the collared turtle
dove came to Poland; since about 1920 it had been spreading north-west
from the European part of Turkey, always settling in towns. In urban parks,
swans have become a common sight, more and more frequently joined by woodpeckers,
flycatchers and thrushes, once found only in forests. Mountain wagtails
now feel at home in Warsaw, where their breeding grounds change as the
underground construction proceeds. The latest newcomers in the urban landscape
are gulls. Their nests appear on roofs in such cities as Kolobrzeg and
Slupsk.
Many species have been brought to Poland by man. These include escapees
from fur animal farms such as the muskrat, which came to the country via
Czechoslovakia in the late 1920s, American mink and raccoon dog. Other
species have been deliberately brought and acclimatized as game animals:
partridges, mouflons (sheep ancestors, living now in the Sudetes and the
Swietokrzyskie Mountains), fallow deer and sika deer.
Rivers,
lakes and the sea
Poland's big rivers are too polluted to harbour much wildlife. The short
rivers of Pomerania and Masuria as well as many mountain streams are home
to the trout and spawning grounds for the sea trout, a migratory variety
of the salmon. To protect the fish, the entire 200km-long Drweca River
and the slightly shorter Pasleka have been designated a nature reserve.
The Drawa, cutting across Pomerania's forests and one of the cleanest
rivers in the country, is a spawning ground for the salmon.
Fish commonly seen in clean waters are the bleak and roach, one of the
best known fish species in Poland, found everywhere except for fast-flowing
mountain streams. Other abundant species are the tench, carp, perch, pike,
eel, bream and crucian carp, which prefers shallow and warm lower courses
of rivers. Related to the perch, pike perch may weigh up to 10kg and occasionally
even more. The crucian carp is resistant to pollution and recently the
sheatfish has also appeared. It is one of the biggest fresh-water species
in Europe - if you're lucky, you can catch crucian carps that weigh up
to 30kg. Middle rivers are home to the barbel. As it needs clean water
and relatively swift current, it is rather rare in Poland.
Clean, deep lakes rich in oxygen teem with pike perch, powan and whitefish.
Whitefish feed on plankton which they catch while swimming just below
water surface. When a lake becomes more abundant in food, they are surpassed
by other fish species. The cool lakes in north-east Poland are ideal for
the burbot and thunderfish. The only naturally fished Tatra lake is Morskie
Oko, where you can see trout.
The Baltic Sea has little fauna due to its low salinity. Baltic water
is five times less salty than in the North Sea and Atlantic. This is why
you'll find in it no common marine creatures such as echinoderms and cephalopods,
while snails and mussels are represented by just a few species. There
is only one common jellyfish species. Baltic mussels and jellyfish are
half the size of their relatives in the North Sea.
One glacial relict common in the Baltic Sea is the Mesidotea entomon,
a millipede-like crustacean. The most abundant fish species are the herring
and cod. Other commonly caught species are the sprat, a few kinds of flatfish
and salmon. Grey seals, once often seen in the Gulf of Gdansk, today occur
mainly in the northern part of the Baltic. Along the Polish coast they
appear only occasionally, as do sea seals, ringed seals and porpoises.
Whales and other big cetaceans are an extremely rare sight in the Baltic.
This is caused by scarce food, shallow sea and problems with passing through
the Danish Straits that close the sea.
Source: www.poland.gov.pl