🌼🐝 The large shaggy bee (Panurgus banksianus) is noticeable because of its big mandibles. For this reason, it can easily be mistaken for a leafcutter bee (Megachile). However, the large shaggy bee is completely black, while dark leafcutter bee species have lighter and much more hair. In addition, shaggy bees collect pollen on their legs, while leafcutter bees collect it on their belly. In Germany, there are three species of shaggy bees, and the large shaggy bee is the biggest of them. Their nests are built in sandy soil or loess, often in larger groups, typically on slopes, unpaved paths, in sand and clay pits, or at the edges of forests. They prefer yellow flowers, such as this water ragwort (Jacobaea aquatica), discovered on a wet meadow near the Stierstädter swamp.

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🌻🐝 I'm still waiting for my bumblebee membership application to be accepted. I also love sunflowers, enjoy lazing around while appearing to be busy, and can fly. Maybe I wasn't entirely honest, but by the time they figure that out, I'll have long since become the bumblebee king.

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🧱🏘 Civilisation!

⛪️🔔🏖 Last but not least, I'll show you human civilization. There are three churches and the island bell, which you can hear ringing in the video. There are numerous restaurants and a few souvenir shops. There are two grocery stores and a 24-hour store with vending machines in the town hall building. Beach chairs are available on the beach, which you must reserve.

✨️😁🌊 You can also see my soft face on my first day on the island (for comparison, see my rough face after 10 days in the previous post).

🪶📃🕰 Life and history of Baltrum

📖🫅🗺 Baltrum is the smallest of the East Frisian Islands in the North Sea. It was first mentioned in 1398, when Widzel tom Brok gave the island – then called "Balteringe" – to Duke Albert of Bavaria and later received it back as a fief. The name "Baldatringe" appeared even earlier, in the 11th century. Ancient writers may have known of it even in the 1st century AD.

🎣🦭🛶 In the past, the sea often threatened the island’s small population. Around 1700, most people lived from fishing and hunting. Villages were sometimes abandoned because of shifting sand or storm damage, such as the great storm of 1825. From 1870, sea walls and dikes were built to protect the land.

🫧🌊🔔 Baltrum became a seaside resort in 1876. The Old Island Church from 1826 is one of its landmarks, with the famous "Island Bell" from a Dutch shipwreck. As visitor numbers grew, the Large Island Church was built in 1930, and the Catholic St. Nicholas Church followed in 1957.

🌳🌹🌿 A small highlight is the Rose Garden between the two main villages, cared for by volunteers and known as Germany’s smallest spa park. There are beautiful figures and the path is made of shells.

🐴🚴‍♀️🛴 Baltrum has no cars or motorcycles. People travel by horse-drawn carriage, bicycle, e-bike, or e-scooter, giving the island its calm and relaxed atmosphere.

💫🦥🐾 My plush son Vincent misses Baltrum at least as much as I do!

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🕳🐇 Follow the rabbit!

🥰 When I was on Baltrum in May, I also saw some young rabbits. They're so cute! I photographed one (picture 3).

🐰 European Rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) were introduced to the East Frisian Islands early on. On Baltrum, the species has been recorded since around 1700. A regulation from 1869 ordered their extermination, which caused populations on several islands – including Baltrum – to disappear by the end of the 19th century.

🐰 Rabbits were released again only in 1962. Today, at least 2,000 animals live there on average. Some are descendants of escaped domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus), but over time the natural fur color of wild rabbits has prevailed. As on other East Frisian Islands, Baltrum also has animals with different fur colors. Black rabbits are called "pastors".

🐰 Rabbits have a strong influence on the island’s ecology: their digging and burrowing loosen the soil, create open patches, and thus promote a greater variety of animal and plant species. In older dune areas, this can start new succession processes, increasing both landscape and biological diversity.

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🕊🔭🐒 I observed some birds!

🪶 In the partially flooded salt marshes, numerous black-headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) gathered to feed. Their cries could be heard for kilometers.

🪶 On a sea buckthorn bush, a male white wagtail (Motacilla alba) in breeding plumage is perched. In non-breeding plumage, adult birds lack the black markings on the head.

🪶 If you got too close to the Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus ostralegus), you immediately felt a pang of guilt. Their piping calls have something reproachful in their tone.

🪶 Common pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) can be encountered everywhere. The colorful males are often heard calling, while the hens try to remain inconspicuous with their chicks.

🪶 A barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is nesting in a shelter. I remember that they nested in exactly the same place back in my childhood.

🥚 A mysterious egg! Which dinosaur laid this?

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🌊✨️ At the beach of Baltrum, the sea washed up the delicate skeleton of Echinocardium cordatum, a heart urchin. Its sharp spines are gone, leaving only the pale, fragile shell with fine patterns.

🫧🤍 The heart urchin lives under the sea, buried in soft sand or mud, up to 15 centimeters deep. It uses its small spines to dig and feeds by filtering tiny food particles like the decomposing remains of organisms and plants (detritus) from the sand around it.

👽🪸 Sea urchins may look very alien at first glance, yet they are actually more closely related to us humans than to snails or insects. This is because sea urchins – just like starfish – belong to the echinoderms.

🪞🤔 If you only look at their appearance, you might think: Wait a minute! Starfish and sea urchins look nothing like most animals. Many animals – including humans – have two mirror-image halves (bilateral symmetry). Echinoderms, however, are radially symmetrical, usually with five identical sections. That might make it seem like they’re even less related to us than snails or insects, which also have two symmetrical sides.

🧬🔬 But appearances can be misleading. Echinoderms, like all vertebrates, belong to the deuterostomes. Snails and insects, on the other hand, are part of the protostomes. A key clue: echinoderms are bilaterally symmetrical in their larval stage. It’s only later in life that they develop their characteristic radial symmetry.

👄♻️ The fundamental difference between protostomes and deuterostomes shows up very early in embryonic development: in deuterostomes, the first body opening (the blastopore) becomes the anus, and the mouth forms later. In protostomes, it’s the other way around – the blastopore develops into the mouth.

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🤔 What do you think I’m holding in my hand?

🔍 If you’re thinking of a seaweed, you’re already halfway there! But apart from its branching structure, there’s not much of the seaweed left to see. That’s because it has been colonized and completely covered by a colony of tiny animals! These are moss animals (bryozoans), more specifically Electra pilosa.

🏘🦠 Moss animals usually form colonies (zoaria) made up of many individual animals (zooids). Each zooid consists of a soft body and a protective shell.

🪸🤝🪸 Within colonies, there is a division of labor. Strongly reduced individuals form stalk segments, tendrils, or root-like filaments. Other zooids produce reproductive cells – still others become "nurse" zooids or develop into bird’s-head-shaped avicularia or vibracularia, which prevent other organisms from settling on the colony. In these specialized zooids, both the tentacle crown and usually the gut are reduced.

🏡🦠 In short: the seaweed is mainly just living space for Electra pilosa, not a partner. For the seaweed itself, it is usually more of a burden than a benefit.

⛴️🪸 Moss animals can cause damage or maintenance costs to ships, harbor structures, and water management facilities through heavy growth.

💉🧫 On the other hand, they produce chemical compounds that are the subject of medical research, including the potential anti-cancer agent bryostatin 1.

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🦪🐌 Mollusks on Baltrum

🌊 On the beach of Baltrum, you can find many shells of mussels and snails from various species. These accumulations of washed-up shells — a phenomenon known in German as Schill — are a common sight along the shoreline. When swimming in the North Sea, you often have to cross a layer of these sharp shells before the water is deep enough to swim (I did it despite the low temperatures in May).

🦪 Here we see Atlantic jackknife clam (Ensis leei), common cockles (Cerastoderma edule), prickly cockles (Acanthocardia echinata), and many other species.

🦪 In the second picture, I’m holding a European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) in my hand. Mussels play an important role in cleaning the oceans, as they filter pollutants from the water. They also form mussel beds, which serve as habitats and function similarly to coral reefs.

🐚 In the third picture, there is an old common whelk shell (Buccinum undatum). These are relatively rare to find because their populations have declined and because hermit crabs prefer exactly this type of shell, often taking them before they can be washed ashore.

🐌 At the groynes – that's the name for the wave breakers made of wooden posts and stones – you can find the common periwinkle (Littorina littorea). In the photo it's on a wooden post, in the video on a stone groyne.

🐌 There are also land snails on Baltrum. I saw the garden banded snail (Cepaea hortensis, on the rose) and the grove snail (Cepaea nemoralis, on the paved path). You can tell them apart by the lip of the shell: Cepaea hortensis has a light edge at the shell opening, while Cepaea nemoralis has a dark one.

🤪 In the last picture, I show you a land slug (Arion species) cheekily smiling into the camera.

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Insects also feel at home on Baltrum 😊

🪲 I encountered the mottled dingy-brown click beetle (Agrypnus murinus) quite frequently. Of course, it also showed me what lies beneath its beautiful wings! The adult beetles feed on grasses and leaves, while the larvae are predatory.

🪲 The dune darkling beetle (Phylan gibbus) is a relative of the mealworm beetle (Tenebrio molitor). This small black beetle inhabits the coastal dunes (grey dunes) from Spain to southern Norway and is a flightless omnivore.

🪲 On the campsite, thousands of amorous garden chafers (Phyllopertha horticola) were buzzing around. They find exactly what they need, as they feed on oak and birch leaves as well as rose blossoms. These plants are very common on Baltrum.

🪲 The alder leaf beetle (Agelastica alni) also finds plenty of suitable food on Baltrum. Although it primarily feeds on the leaves of alders (Alnus), it also eats the leaves of creeping willows (Salix repens) and downy birches (Betula pubescens), which are common on the small island, and occasionally those of bird cherries (Prunus padus).

🦋 The red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) is a strikingly large migratory butterfly. Here it is feeding on the blossoms of a bird cherry (Prunus padus).

🦋 Blue like the sky is the common blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus). It's quite cute. It finds plenty of flowers on Baltrum, for example clover and thistles. I encountered this one on a salt meadow.

🪰 Flies are, of course, native to Baltrum as well. I believe the small fly on the dog rose (Rosa canina) is a species of Phaonia. However, it is not easy to say for sure.

🪰 The large blowfly on the windowpane is probably a Calliphora vicina, at least the brown mandible area suggests so. It finds many bird and rabbit carcasses on the island for its larvae – of which I have seen quite a few.

🐝 On a common bugloss (Anchusa officinalis), I saw a buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) climbing from flower to flower. Was its rear already too fat to fly?

🍯 I also spotted honeybees (Apis mellifera). Of course, people on Baltrum don’t want to do without their own honey.

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🦀 The crustaceans of Baltrum

Barnacles are marine crustaceans that, as adults, have a very different appearance from the classic crustacean. In the past, some were wrongly classified as mussels, even though they are not related to molluscs. Their larvae are free-swimming and visually resemble typical crustaceans. The species pictured originally comes from the waters around Australia and New Zealand, but has also appeared in the North Sea since the 1940s and has been multiplying rapidly ever since.

Sand hoppers (Talitrus saltator) are more clearly recognizable as crustaceans. They hop around on the sand, feeding on all sorts of organic matter. While I was taking the video, one nibbled on my hand, but I still managed to keep the camera relatively still.

The common pill bug (Armadillidium vulgare) is a woodlouse with a worldwide distribution. It's very common on Baltrum, and as a child, I enjoyed watching and making them roll up into a ball by touch. Not everyone knows that woodlice are crustaceans.

The shore crab (Carcinus maenas) is probably the most clearly identifiable crustacean. Its lateral locomotion evolved because it allows it to move more easily with its broad body. Firstly, it fits better through narrow spaces, and secondly, its body offers less resistance to water movement. In the video, you can see sand hoppers searching for organic materials on and around the crab.

The common hermit crab (Pagurus bernhardus) is another crustacean that requires a closer look. It lives in a snail shell. When the tide recedes, hermit crabs and shore crabs either try to follow the water or burrow into the wet sand to survive until high tide.

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