Finland 2019 – Stunning Squirrels

The Finnish forests surrounding the area I stayed were just beautiful. The mixture of evergreens and deciduous species meant that the colours were even more stunning. The clean air also means that there are lots of lichens, all adding to the richness of the colour palette in this landscape. Finland is Europe’s most heavily forested country and cover 74.2% of the land area and being over sixteen timrees more forest per capita than other European countries, on average.

It was not surprising to see that this area supported a healthy population of the stunning red squirrel. Moving into their winter coat, these were simply stunning and ranged in colour from a sandy brown, through grey, to a russet red. They took full advantage of the food on offer , giving us all wonderful opportunities to watch and to photograph them. They really are the most endearing of mammals and their ability to pose for the camera is really quite wonderful.

From peeping around tree trunks to popping up in Autumnal undergrowth, it was almost as if they were really working the camera!

 

They are very fast movers though, so getting a good image is not as easy as it may seem! I would have quite happily spent all my days photographing just these beauties and I did spent quite a lot of time wandering the wooded paths on the look out for them.

I took lots of images and these are a few of my favourites …..

 

 

 

nnnn



from www.wildlifekate.co.uk https://wildlifekate.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/finland-2019-stunning-squirrels/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2019 off to a reasonable start

Image
Overcast, 5°, light NNW. A Little Egret seen today on the way out to Lollingdon and appeared to drop down near Amwell Spring. The hill hosted around 100 Fieldfare and a flock of c50 Meadow Pipit for a time before moving off over the top. Several Reed Bunting and Yellowhammer around the hill and a single Corn Bunting . A small flock of c20 Pied Wagtail feeding out with the Sheep. A few more Fieldfare and Redwing scattered around the Lollingdon area, a Goldcrest , Grey Heron , Kestrel , a couple of Jay , 2 Bullfinch and several Starling amongst other species. A Brambling in a private garden. Per Alan Dawson. 2 Blackcap in TW’s garden and 2 Chiffchaff at CSW. The flock of c60 Golden Plover still around Cholsey Hill. Brambling (courtesy Alan Dawson) from Cholsey Wildlife https://cholseywildlife.blogspot.com/2019/01/2019-off-to-reasonable-start.html
Read more

A Butterfly day

Image
Another sunny day, 24°, light E. A walk alongside the Bunk line from Church road to the bypass. Butterflies were the order of the day with literally hundreds of Meadow Brown on the wing today. They were everywhere. Another 8 Painted Lady seen with some looking very tatty after a presumably long flight and ageing. Best one of the day was a single Silver-washed Fritillary seen flying around a large garden before disappearing from view. Good numbers of Marbled White all along the route. Other species noted were: Small Skipper , Large Skipper , Large White , Small White , Green-veined White , Brimstone (1), Brown Argus (3), Common Blue (8), Red Admiral (6), Small Tortoiseshell (c20), Comma (3), Speckled Wood (2), Ringlet (12) and Small Heath (2). Some thistles were in flower on the edge of a bean field and these held the majority of Painted Lady , Small Tort and Marbled White . Dragonflies: Banded Demoiselle (M&F), Large Red Damselfly and Southern Hawke
Read more

A Great Start to 2020 at Yew View – Tawny Owls & Interesting Feeding Station Meetings!

Image
We had a great year at Yew View last year, with lots of great wildlife and some amazing insights into the lives of our local wildlife, especially our lovely Tawny Owl pair who raised  their beautiful owlets to fledge into the garden. We built an otter holt, with cameras and encouraged as much wildlife as we could into this 7 acre site. We have lots of exciting ideas and projects for 2020, of course. Hopefully, after months of high river levels, we will get our otter holt up and running with its two cameras. It has spent more time under water than above water so far and the cameras are sitting up in the office, waiting for the river to be stable enough for me to feel confident about reinstalling them! We are also going to upgrade some of the cameras we have, as well as creating some new feeding stations. We have a new piece of land that is also going to be developed for wildlife this year….. a large pool and boggy area for dragonflies and damselflies, wild flower meadow, tree planting
Read more