Small Five and Big Five - Kommandørgården

"Small Five"

"Small Five" will provide an unforgettable nature experience. The World Heritage site contains the food and habitats of millions of wading birds and waterfowl during their migration between the Arctic breeding grounds and the winter district in the south.

"Small Five" is adapted to floods and dry traps, they withstand saltwater and rain showers, survive in frost and summer heat, and they are successfully defied by an armada of hungry predators.

The five small ones are sandworms, heart mussels, healing, plain beach crab and large duvet snail.

Blow lug
... eat sand and produce the characteristic spaghetti mound in the mud.

Common Cockle
... is very common in the Wadden Sea. You can feel it under your feet while you wade. When you look at it from the page, you can see where it got its name from.

Common Shrimp
... Applied widely, shrimp can cover any of the groups with elongated bodies and a primarily swim mode of lokomotion.

Common Shore Crab
... is an ecologically key species as it often occurs and is an important prey for birds and fish.

Laver spire shell
... "grasses" the wattage surface in large numbers. With their excretions, they contribute to the wetting of mud.

Excursions to the "Small Five" of the Wadden Sea will be held in the national park in many places.

"Big Five"

In the Wadden Sea, even large animals can often be observed up close.

The big five are woodpecker seal, grey seal, guinea pig, sea eagle, sturgeon.

Until a few decades ago, many large animals in Europe were hunted intensely, some species have even been extinct. In the Wadden Sea, seal and porpoise have survived to this day. Grey seal and sea eagle were extinct, but wandered from other regions again. Only sturgeon is extinct with us today.

Woodpecker seal
... act on land quite awkward. In the water, however, with their feet transformed into "fins" and their "Underwater lenses" are perfect for fishing, and seals can remain underwater for up to 30 minutes.

Greyseal
... are the largest predators in Germany. Typically, the tapered head is in the animals.

Porpoises
... are among the smallest whales in the world. And even more perfectly as the seals adapted to marine life. They're not easy to look at.

Sea Eagle
... very impressive in the great outdoors. The mighty bird of prey breeds only a few years back on the North Sea coast. Here he mainly uses geese, gulls and other birds as a food source.

Sturgeon
... is dead out with us. He was the oldest of the fish in the Wadden Sea, as a species about 200 million years old, a living fossil.