If you bike or walk around the Netherlands you’ll become a bird watcher, a sheep farmer, or a cattle herder, whether or not you intend to. There are animals everywhere – they’re mostly just outside the city centers but sometimes in the center, too! Need a better vantage point? Find a nature tower.

You’ll see swans, geese, ducks, magpies, herons, coots, pheasants, and meadow birds. Two cities have deer parks. Sheep – and lambs in the spring – are grazing along the bike paths. Texel island has two breeds of cattle and in Rotterdam there’s a group of Scottish Highland cows freely roaming in a small section of natural area without a fence that you can bike through.

Oh, there are also a lot of outdoor cats. And a campaign to keep them inside at night.

A heron flies from its perch on a bridge railing.

This post shows a selection of the animals I saw over six days exploring Rotterdam, Delft, and Zoetermeer, and the surrounding areas.

Wherever there’s water in the Netherlands there are birds
Geese at Kralingse Bos in Rotterdam

Speaking of that nature tower…it’s in the Ackerijkse Plassen nature reserve and you can see the skyscrapers of Rotterdam, 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) away.