Successful two weeks

Well, I am now back in a very rainy and not so warm UK and catching up on processing images and emails. The last two weeks have been an incredible experience, a lot of fun and meeting the rest of the TWP team was great, already looking forward to heading out again in September. After a full on morning and late afternoon/evening of walking and photography, we were treated not only to a wonderful sunrise through the trees in the forest but also to the eclipse on Wednesday night which is the first image for this instalment.

I am gradually uploading images to my website with details of the equipment used and going through the invertebrate images working on identification, if you can provide any help with the identification process please let me know! I have now finalised the details for the 2012 Natural Europe Calendar which will cost just £12 including first class postage within the UK, images will comprise of mammals, birds, plants, insects and landscapes and there will be space for writing. I am just going through choosing the images and as they are selected they will appear on my website here along with further details: 2012 Calendar I am also having a sale of existing stock over the weekend of July 30th and 31st (Saturday and Sunday) with up to 50% of some items, for full details click here: Buy Direct from the Photographer. One last bit of news, my Corryvreckan whirlpool image is being published in a new book coming out in October about the Earth. This last image is one of my favourites from the last two weeks of the sun coming through the trees, taken in black and white.

Well, that is about it for now, back to the washing and selecting images for the calendar and hoping that the sun will come out sometime in the next few days!

An update from in the field in Romania

I arrived safely in Romania and it has been a busy few days, meeting the team and organising trips to find and start documenting the wildlife. We have been concentrating on local areas around Odjula and have had some great success in only a few days and have begun the task of photographing and identifying plants, insects and amphibians. We have undertaken both short and long walks through forests and meadows in search of species to document and have so far found at least four different species of grasshopper, a cricket, three species of orchid, a salamander and a yellow bellied toad, not to mention the Carpathian deer and a family of wild boar. The area is incredible with breathtaking forests and vast amounts of life. So for the first photo, this was taken in a clearing in the forest with low cloud creating a wonderfully atmospheric image.

Hiking through the forest is a wonderful experirence that words cannot explain but unfortunately in many areas of the forest illegal trapping still occurs using both snares and foothold traps, both of which cause suffering to the caught animal as they are not killed when they are trapped and the traps may not be checked for days. During one of our trips through the forest we came across both types of traps along a path with the snare first followed by the foothold trap, luckily our team members saw the traps, disabled and removed them.

So a little more about the wildlife and this area has a huge diversity of species from plants to insects to mammals. The Carpathians are home to a specific deer called the Carpathian Deer which is found nowhere else. It is much larger than the familar red deer and has a long thin face with a dark stripe running along the ridge of the neck. The forests are also home to fire salamanders and yellow bellied toad which mate, lay their eggs and look after their young in pools of water. We have seen both of these species and if you click on the link below you can watch a video of the fire salamander. Fire Salamander

As for the bugs, well there are a lot of them around and some very interesting ones at that, the first photo is of a yet unidentified insect that we found next to the landrover.

The second photo is of one of the many species of grasshopper that we have seen, but this one was a little camera shy and kept hiding behind the grass stem!

We are making good progress with documenting the flora and fauna and as always you can seen a more extensive collection of images and videos on both my Flickr page and new facebook page. Right back to cataloguing images!