ULRICH MAGIN rounds up the Euro-weirdness, from gull hunts to yet more penguin misidentifications
THE BIG SMOKER
Mount Etna on Sicily is one of the most active volcanos of Europe. The last eruption catalogued on Wikipedia was on the morning of 14 August 2023. In February 2024, Etna started to blow smoke rings into the air in massive numbers. The phenomenon was observed and photographed not only by locals, but by many tourists as well. Boris Behncke, a volcanologist of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania, stressed that “no volcano on Earth produces so many vapour rings as Etna – we have known this for some time. In 2000, and again from July 2023, the crater Bocca Nuova has released thousands such rings, and continues to do so. In the late afternoon of 2 April, a small vent opened on the northeastern rim of the southeast crater, which produces ejaculations of incandescent gas. On the next morning it was clear that these resulted in an impressive amount of vapour rings. This activity has been ongoing since. It must have resulted in hundreds if not thousands of these beautiful figures.” Giornale di Sicila, 5 Apr 2024.
PENGUINS IN ASTURIAS
Penguins are a very fortean species of birds – from Ivan T Sanderson’s giant penguin in Florida, 1948 (FT298:68), or the alleged cave painting of a penguin discovered in Grotte Cosquer, to the sightings of penguins where there should be none, like Pillig in Germany, in July 2020 (FT399:27) or Zurich in Switzerland in January 2023 (FT432:24). And now Asturias in Spain. People just love penguins! In February 2024, residents of Castrillón in the El Espartal area on the coast of Asturias, in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, began to notice the “surprising phenomenon” of strange birds on the cliffs with “a remarkable resemblance to penguins”. The discovery “has created great confusion among the residents of the area. On Salinas beach, the Castrillón City Council reported the discovery of two specimens of ‘guirre’, a bird that is often confused with a penguin due to its distinctive physical appearance.” An official report says a police patrol appeared on Salinas beach to investigate the sighting of these birds during the early hours of the morning. They confirmed that the penguins were actually common guillemots. The Guillemot Association pointed out that these birds are actually native to the region, and anything but rare, but that their numbers were higher than usual this winter. lavan
