This weekend was supposed to be very wet and we almost didn’t go to the house. France and Germany have both had floods and we were expecting the same. However, despite the occasional short, hard downpour, it was scorching hot. My garden is completely overgrown but this week I discovered that the engine of my […]

For the last few days we’ve had nothing but rain. During early summer we get scorching hot mornings and then massive storms in the afternoons. Today while out checking my trail camera I was surrounded by Fire Salamanders (Salamandra salamandra). These are one of my favourite creatures in the Carpathian Forests. They’re very slow, docile […]

Yesterday evening while doing our usual walk along the disused bush road up in the hills outside the village, we encountered a badger (Meles meles) acting very strangely. For a start, this was the first badger I’ve seen here in 18 years (I regularly catch them on game camera, usually licking it, but never encounter […]

Despite having left the camera out for over a week I had a pretty poor showing from the beasties. A fox blurred past and a badger was a pixellated mess too far away to make a decent photo of, plus 95% of the footage was again from the resident blackbird and mouse, depending on time […]

Yesterday we went for a walk just after lunch. Knowing that area well, and the time of day, I wasn’t expecting to see any large animals about as they usually prefer dawn and dusk to break the cover of the treeline. However, as we’ve had three days of constant hard rain, and this was the […]

This Green woodpecker (Picus viridis) always taunts me when I walk along the old road near the house. Every time I try to take a photo it hides behind a tree trunk and then flies on to the next tree when I try to get closer. It basically acts like a squirrel. We don’t get […]

Probably, out of all my hobbies and interests, cataloguing the creatures which live around my house ranks the highest. As a kid I used to keep a daily diary of what birds and animals I’d seen and often draw one of them. Now I have cameras and trailcams but the principle is still the same. […]

I can’t explain how much I love being able to wander freely out here – through meadows and forests. From my atelier’s French doors I look across a huge field leading up the side of a hill to a forest I love to spend time in. All I have to do is get dressed, grab […]

Today we (my wife, eldest son and myself) went for a very pleasant walk through the forest at the top of the hill behind the house. The journey took several hours and was quite hard going due to the steep climb on an unused forester’s trail, but the forest looked stunning with flowers growing everywhere. […]

This is the weekly round up for the beginning of May. This morning the sun was shining so I hopped on my motorbike, Feisty, and set off for my village house. Once there, I donned my bush garb and traipsed across the now overgrown meadow to go check on my trailcam – I had a […]