Looduskalender

A new webcam for us!

http://www.looduskalender.ee/en/node/7236

This webcam look across a ploughed field, waiting for black grouse to do the mating display dance for us.

It is very experimental - no-one knows if the grouse will dance in view of the camera, or somewhere else. Looduskalender hopes we can make useful observations, then more will be learned about the needs of this particular type of viewing.

mms://tv.eenet.ee/teder

That is good news! Welcome to the black grouse and all other animals
that show up there...

oh my, to be up and awake before sunrise
that will be tricky....
sleepyheads, like myself can watch grass growing and the field turning green

Kuremari wrote:oh my, to be up and awake before sunrise
that will be tricky....
sleepyheads, like myself can watch grass growing and the field turning green

But, Kuremari, maybe you can leave the webcam on and have volume turned really LOUD. So the grouse will wake you up - if they come.

Does anyone know why this particular behaviour is named lek, and what is the origin of the work?

Liis, is this your department - the origin of words?

Jo UK wrote:Liis, is this your department - the origin of words?

Not professionally - which is probably why I am always curious about the whys and how-comes

Jo UK wrote:Does anyone know why this particular behaviour is named lek, and what is the origin of the work?

Wikipedia says, very precisely, that "the etymology of the word lek [in English, it must be supposed] is from 1871" ..."probably from the Swedish "leka", to play".
Somewhere else the origins of "lek" is said to be from Old Norse. Which is a rather indeterminate thing, "the language spoken by the inhabitants of the Scandinavian countries durig the Viking age", or some time up to 1300 (I thought the Scandinavian languages had begun to separate before that).
My (rather brief) etymological Swedish dictionary somehow manages to trace lek back to Sanskrit by way of Lithuanian ... Always with a sense of moving, jumping, playing. As lek, leka it is still in use in Swedish, and obviously hasn't changed much from the Old Norse period.
Professional linguists, help !
PS. Only, to make it more interesting, having exported the lek to others, the preferred Swedish term for grouse (capercaillie etc) displays is -spel, as in orrspel, tjäderspel etc
I thought the original lek had survived in Scots, by the way.

Liis wrote: But, Kuremari, maybe you can leave the webcam on and have volume turned really LOUD. So the grouse will wake you up - if they come.

you can`t be serious...or are you!?

i saw a big bird flying by, unfortunately, too late, the bird was almost gone from the view...
an eagle or a stork?

Kuremari wrote: you can`t be serious...or are you!? -------

About being roused that early? Or having the grouse as alarm clock? Or ecologically irresponsible to leave the computer on for the night?
1 - yes, certainly; 2- OK, they may not be heard loud enough 3 - true, maybe shouldn't

Kuremari wrote: you can`t be serious...or are you!?

i saw a big bird flying by, unfortunately, too late, the bird was almost gone from the view...
an eagle or a stork?

An eagle it seemed to me..I saw no long legs..

Liss..if Lek has to do with play...in German a word for black grouse cock (Birkhahn) ist
doch auch: der Spielhahn?

ergee wrote:Liss..if Lek has to do with play...in German a word for black grouse cock (Birkhahn) ist
doch auch: der Spielhahn?

But what, then, are the capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) cocks called; they have at least as remarkable plays or displays?

And to add to the confusion: Swedish "tjäder", capercaillie, is "metsis" in Estonian. And Estonian "teder", grouse, Tetrao tetrix, is "orre" in Swedish. I strongly suspect that somehow, sometime, these two birds got lost in translation, or at least mixed up.
(Hmmm - like the elks, moose and wapitis ...)

5:48
I've had the cam open for a while -- wind, rocks and grass, and some sunlight circles.

6:02
Sun is hitting the grass now. (maybe earlier as I am relying on sounds for the grouse and am not watching full time)

the word 'lek' was almost an 'ahaa, of course!' experience for me, because 'lek' means 'game' and 'leka' means 'to play' (a game) in Swedish just like Liis wrote. 'spela' means about the same but also 'to play a play' like in the theater and 'to play an instrument'.

'leka' is 'leikkiä' in Finnish, which sounds pretty much the same and my etymological dictionary says that it is likely that the word is borrowed from the ancient Scandinavian to Finnish. we have also the word 'peli' which is borrowed from the Swedish 'spel' and 'pelata' meaning 'to play/spela' but in Finnish it's only games that we 'pelata', not instruments or plays.

the display game the grouse play in the spring is called 'soidin', referring to playing an instrument ('soittaa' is 'to play an instrument'; there's "music" in lek ). but it may also be called 'teerenpeli' = the play/game(=lek!) of grouse, but the 'teerenpeli' may take place also among humans!

the lek of grouse usually takes place as a gathering of large number of birds of both sexes, but i think that with capercaillie it's only one solitary male who is playing to few females....
there are skylarks singing and lapwings, too.
i like the "soundscape" here. it gives the open space impression.

4:51
I have turned the cam on and I can sort of see rocks and grass.

I have a knitting group/class coming over shortly so I won't be watching but we will hear sounds if they are louder than the wind. (In the past I scared them with pig sounds.)

4:58
The light has reached the point when all is clearly visible.

7:18
I heard a tractor go by, but I did not see it.

7:28
This time I saw it. On the next pass it is going to take out the cam

and then another pass

And the tractor went by again.

I have seen gulls (?) some seem slightly the wrong shape, a few other largish birds and the field has lots of medium sized birds -- they are too small to see except when they move.

it's raining hard here, too, but it doesn't stop the birds from singing. there's at least the voices of a skylark and a lapwing singing almost all the time... i think there's a yellowhammer, too.

yesterday evening it suddenly struck me: this is a place where we can literally watch the grass grow...
or actually now that the ground is harrowed it is rather some sort of grain that will be growing here, i guess. - my grandfather would have loved this camera. he was a farmer to the marrow of his bones. actually he did watch a scenery like this from his window every summer when he had retired and he was living in the farm with us... bless his memory.

i think that the birds that can be seen in the back flying and bouncing against the sky are lapwings. i've also heard a jackdaw and a hooded crow.

EDIT: here's a little sound sample i recorded a bit later, at 11.37 ->. there you can hear at least a lapwing, a skylark and a fieldfare ( and see some lapwings flying in the back )

this is such a fun camera, it's like a puzzling picture, like "who's that one walking over there? and there's someone else! who's that??"
in this clip there's a starling singing closest to the camera and there's a skylark singing in the sky (as it should ). there are also some calls of a lapwing.

on the ground in the centre there's a wagtail ( a little grey bird with whitesh head a black spot on the throat) walking to the left and out of the picture, and a starling (the black bird walking upright) walking in the centre and then to the right.