The Zandvoort Big Five
Visit the Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes or Zuid-Kennemerland National Park and meet our Zandvoort ‘Big Five’ on a beautiful walk or lovely bike ride.
Deer
Zandvoort fallow deer are everywhere! Of course in the Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes, but sometimes also in your garden. At night, they sometimes like to walk along the promenade in a small herd for an evening stroll, so watch carefully! Fallow deer can be recognised by their light to dark brown fur with white spots. A tail, white with a black stripe from the back, often swings visibly back and forth. The male is called a stag and a female is called a doe. Fallow deer like to eat herbaceous plants, shrubs, tree leaves, acorns, chestnuts and mushrooms. In the absence of green leaves, deer feast on the bark of a variety of trees in winter.
Wisents
The wisent is the cousin of the American bison and a distant relative of the domestic cattle. Compared to domestic cattle, they have a slimmer build, a high back, short horns curved upwards and a fairly even chestnut-brown coat. In the shade of a forest, they are hard to spot. Wisents are well adapted to living in a forest environment, but need grassland and scrub for food in addition to forest. With their slender build and short, inward-curving horns, they can also move easily through scrub and dense young forest. In Zandvoort, you can see them in the Zuid-Kennemerland National Park. The visitor centre regularly organises walks to these primeval cattle.
Konik horses
Another primal hero: the Konik horse. An originally Polish species of horse, pony-sized. This breed of horse usually grows only 1.40 metres tall and an adult animal weighs 400 kg. The Konik horse is usually grey in colour, but sometimes this horse can also be brown and has a distinctive stripe running down its back. You can find the grey-brown horses in South-Kennemerland National Park. The konik horses graze in this nature reserve to maintain the wildlife. They are often chosen because they keep the grass a lot shorter than other grazers. Konik horses, in fact, have teeth in both their upper and lower jaws.
Scottish highlander
The third large grazer in the list is the Scottish Highlander. Together with the wisent and the Konik horse, the Scottish Highlander is used as a ‘tool’ to manage the vegetation in the Kennemer dunes. A Highlander stands out because of its long-haired, reddish-brown coat and the hair on its forehead that falls in front of its eyes. What is also striking about the cow are its large horns and its somewhat unusual physical proportions: the animal has short legs and a short neck in relation to its head and body.
Foxes
With their fluffy tails and black pointed ears, they are great to look at. The fox’s fur is predominantly reddish-brown; the belly and tip of the tail are white. A female fox is called a nut; the male is a rack. At sunrise and sunset, you are most likely to encounter one in the Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes. They are somewhat shy, so just sit very still. In autumn, foxes go in search of their own territory. Females stay closer to home while males travel several kilometres until they find a suitable territory.