Title photo: Green Woodpecker I know the year’s not over yet but I figured I’d update my blog with some of the wildlife highlights from this year. This is by no means all the animals or birds I encountered, or even photographed/filmed, but the ones presented are some of the more memorable. Probably the most […]

A cottage in one of the wildest and most beautiful areas of Europe during a long, freezing cold Winter. Life here is both a daily challenge and a great source of joy. I’m often asked why I live where I do, and in this short video I try to explain my reasoning. Traditional rural life […]

Well, the weather sucks. We get the occasional bout of warm weather with pure blue sky followed by days of torrential rain (and I mean hardcore rain), hurricane winds and sub-zero night time temperatures. And we’re supposed to be in late Spring/early Summer. Two days after planting the tomatoes the temperature plummeted, and it looks […]

On January 31st, the opening to my latest art exhibition was held at Podduklianske gallery, Svidnik, Slovakia. The main focus was again on my art on animal skins. It was quite well attended, including by my father and step-mother as they came over for that and also my wife’s 50th birthday party. Because of her […]

I finally realized another of my life’s ambitions whilst on one of our evening walks outside the village. My wife and I spotted a small herd of Red deer hinds and fawns on one of the hillsides and they bolted into the forest. Thinking they’d picked up our scent we carried on walking. 20 minutes […]

My daughter wanted to see Hallstatt in Austria so we booked a hotel in the Alps and, following a week’s break by the sea in Croatia, made a 12-hour drive through Slovenia and via the incredible Loblipass to Tauplitzalm above Bad Mittendorf. At 1650 metres (5413 feet) above sea level, we were woefully unacclimatized to our […]

On an extremely spontaneous impulse we decided to stay the weekend at the house for the first time since leaving it on New Year’s Day. It’s been a long, harsh winter this year and having a couple of days of heat and blue sky was too irresistible. Unfortunately, the interior of the house is still […]

If it walks, crawls, flies or slithers then chances are I’ve got one somewhere on my property. The old log cabin (budka) at the end of my garden is home to quite a few bats. This one is roosting from one of the multiple wasp nests we have about the place. There’s an immense wasp […]

It’s  a very long way to Peljesac, Croatia, and it’s an even longer way back… This summer holiday we rented a place on the sea in a remote area of the southern Peljesac peninsula (6kms to the nearest basic shop – that’s remote). As usual we drove south through Slovakia, then went from the East […]

This evening I’m a happy man as I finally managed to photograph the annoyingly elusive black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius). These birds, along with the golden oriole I photographed earlier this year, have been tauting me for decades. Similarly, neither species of bird seems to sit still long enough  to be photographed. They’re crap photos I […]