Animals

The rich nature described above is reflected in the variety of animals photographed by me on the island and found on this wildlifeaspo.com site. Animals depicted on the mammals page such as roedeer are common along with minks and hedgehogs, the latter having recently started to decrease. There are about ten moose present throughout the year. Unfortunately, squirrels, and foxes are now rare, while hare are gone. The common reptiles on the island are grass snakes and vipers. The Common toad and the Agile frog dominate among the amphibians. A large variety of insects is illustrated on this website, namely butterflies and moths; beetles, and true bugs; bees, and bumblebees together with vespidae and other wasps. Moreover, there are hoverflies and other flies as well as additional insects such as damsel and dragonflies, bush crickets plus spiders.

Aspö is located along the Southern East-West flyway in-between mainly Öland and Scania. When the winds are right, it is a good place to primarily watch ducks and geese together with small numbers of passing raptors, mainly hawks, buzzards, eagles, and kites. Barnacle geese and cranes dominate, and where a record 3000 (approx.) cranes flew by in two hours on an early October-day in 2016 (Photo 40).  Many ‘steelbirds’ also pass over the island daily, the main reason being its location along air routes to North-eastern Europe (Photo 41).