Qualla: Duinen van Texel National Park

Duinen van Texel National Park: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stormbeest, Public domain. In 1927 a Dutch botanist named Jac. P. Thijsse wrote a small illustrated book about the flora and fauna of Texel. The book was cheap, the illustrations were stunning, and the pictures came free inside the wrappers of Verkade chocolate bars. A generation of Dutch children grew up pasting images of spoonbills and dune orchids into albums and learning to care about an island most of them had never seen. Seventy-five years later, in 2002, the dunes Thijsse documented became a national park. The cheap chocolate-bar book did much of the work of getting them protected.

Image: Stormbeest | Public domain

Duinen van Texel National Park: What the Dunes Actually Are

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Traitor, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park covers approximately forty-three square kilometers along the western and northern coasts of Texel, gathering up every dune system on the seaward side of the island and adding the great sand plains that drift off the southern and northern points. From the air the geometry...

Image: Traitor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duinen van Texel National Park: Where the New Sand Goes

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heinonlein, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. Walk south to north across the park and you walk through stages of ecological succession. On the newest dunes, the ones closest to the beach, biestarwegras takes hold in the salt-sprayed sand. A little inland, where the dunes are older and the salt diluted, marram grass replaces ...

Image: Heinonlein | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Duinen van Texel National Park: The Spoonbill Capital

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Traitor, CC BY-SA 3.0. De Geul is a wet dune valley that started life as part of Mok Bay before the navy built a dam to extract drinking water from the dunes. Water extraction stopped in 1993 and De Geul started to rewet itself. Through a ditch with fish ladders, three-spined sticklebacks began to swim...

Image: Traitor | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duinen van Texel National Park: De Slufter

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JePe at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Slufter is the dramatic exception to everything else about Texel. A wide dune valley with an open break through the outer dunes, it lets the North Sea pour in twice a day on the tide. At average high water the seawater fills only the creeks and shallow pools. At extreme high ...

Image: JePe at Dutch Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duinen van Texel National Park: Who Lives in the Sand

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jasper99, CC BY-SA 3.0. The bird list reads like a field-guide showcase. Greylag and brent goose, common shelduck, wigeon, eider, scoter, oystercatcher, pied avocet, golden plover, peewit, knot, dunlin, bar-tailed godwit, short-eared owl, hen harrier. The passerines in the dune scrub include northern wh...

Image: Jasper99 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duinen van Texel National Park: Walking and Cycling It

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit WeeJeeVee, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. The trail system is colour-coded: red, yellow, blue, green. The green routes are closed during bird breeding season because they go straight through nesting habitat. Many of the bicycle trails are open year-round and run between the dune ridges where the cyclist can see the marsh...

Image: WeeJeeVee | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl