‘Hear the blackbird and the song thrush, the sound of spring’
You make the podcast together with Bart Geeraedts, how is your division of roles?
“We know each other from our daughters’ schoolyard. Bart works for the radio and knows a bit about technology, I am employed by the municipality as an ecologist. He came up with the proposal. He asks a question, I tell. In our first podcast he asked me why he encountered bat when he was getting wood for his stove, then I will tell you something about bats.”
Why Fox and LommerBos en Lommer is also nature, isn’t it?
“But the fox stands for the fauna, shade for the flora, and those are the two things we talk about. City nature is discussed in the broadest sense, animals and plants, from insects to fish and from elms to mushrooms.”
What are we wondering about this spring?
“At the moment the magnolia and the Japanese cherry are already in bloom, used to be only in May, with my birthday. Everything is blooming earlier because of climate change.”
And what about animals?
“Look at the lemon butterfly and the peacock eye, they are flying around now. Hear the blackbird, the hedge sparrow and the song thrush: the sound of spring. There are brown frogs and small newts in ponds. Elsewhere you will find pine martens, otters, beavers and stone martens, no, nature in the city is not bad.”
Is your next podcast about that too?
“We treat silverfish in it. Did you know that there are two types of these? One likes books, the other likes the bathroom. People find them scary and dirty, but they are very harmless.”