The photos on this website all portray the wildlife of the rich island nature of Aspö, which I have visited regularly since 1982 and where I live permanently since 2008. It is located in the Baltic Sea, in the Southeastern archipelago of Sweden, South of Karlskrona, Blekinge. Aspö is then surrounded by other islands except in the Southern part, where there is open sea all the way to the European continent. Besides its rich animal life, Aspö is also worth visiting for its outstanding cultural history, inter alia demonstrated by that the island is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre: The Naval Port of Karlskrona, established at the beginning of the 1700’s. Many historic military installations are then found on the island. Aspö is also much influenced by its agricultural and fisheries past, where the settlements are mainly found along the East and West coasts, creating a lot of space in-between for wildlife. Aspö is presented more in detail on the website’s first page, including a number of photos of its cultural history and scenery, flowers and trees as well as a general overview of the animals photographed by me on the island.
The nature is diverse, where the Northern and Central parts are dominated by a pine tree forest, and the other parts by a deciduous forest. The good mix of various biotopes is reflected in the large variety of animals found on this website. The wildlife photos of Aspö start with the mammals (däggdjur), followed by the reptiles (kräldjur) and the amphibians (groddjur).
The plentiful images of the birds taken on the island come next and are split up into three groups of photos: Swans (svanar) up to Waders (vadare); Gulls (måsar) up to Swallows (svalor); and, Warblers (sångare) up to Buntings (fältsparvar). The bird photos are systematized according to the ‘Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World’, published by HBW and BirdLife International in Lynx Edicions (2014). Here, the world population of birds are ordered according to recent research results on species and races. This taxonomy often differs from those found in most local field guides. The English names of the birds are also taken from this checklist of the birds of the world.
The largest number of wildlife photos on this Aspö website concern insects, several of which are taken in my garden. The many beautiful butterflies and moths shown involve Butterflies (dagfjärilar), Geometer moths (mätarfjärilar) as well as Owlet moths (nattlfyn), Hawk moths (dagsvärmare) and a few others. The order of presenting the butterfly photos is based on the first volume of the ‘Encyclopedia of the Swedish Flora and Fauna’ that covers all 140 species of Nordic butterflies (‘Nationalnyckeln’, Uppsala, Sweden 2005). The order for the moths chiefly follows the fieldguide ‘Sveriges fjärilar’ (Bugbook Publishing, 2011).
Four groups of beetles are presented on one page, mainly Longhorn (långhorningar) and Stage beetles (ekoxbaggar), Ladybirds (nyckelpigor), Soldier beetles (flugbaggar), and Ground beetles (jordlöpare), along with True bugs (skinnbaggar).
This part is followed by the large variation of wasps photographed on Aspö, e.g. Bees (bin), and Bumblebees (humlor). The photos of the bumblebees and the bees are named and systematized according to ‘The Field Guide to Bees of Great Britain and Ireland’ by Steven Falk (2015). It is also useful for the bee fauna in Sweden, since most of those of the book are also found here. Another big group of wasps included are the Vespidae (getingar), which have been classified and named based on ‘Steklar: Myror – getingar, Nationalnyckeln, Artdatabanken, 2012’. Other groups of wasps included on this page are Spider (väg-), Emerald (guld-), Sphecoid (rov-), and Parasitican wasps (parasitsteklar) together with Sawflies (växtsteklar).
Photos of the diptera (a large group of flies) are found on the next page, that is Hoverflies (blomflugor), Horse-and-deer flies (bromsar), Robber (rov-) and Stiletto flies (stilettflugor), Beeflies (svävflugor), Thick-headed flies (stekelflugor), Tachind flies (parasitflugor) plus four other families of flies assembled in one group. For hoverflies I use the Swedish and scientific names found in another ‘Nationalnyckel’, viz. ‘Tvåvingar: Blomflugor’ from 2009. Since there are no English names given in this guide for the hoverflies, I use their scientific names. Generally, it is harder to find English as well as Swedish names for many of the flies and some other insects photographed. I therefore use their scientific names mostly based on the ‘Artdatabanken’ in those cases, where I cannot specify them in English or Swedish.
The last section of insects consists of Damsel (flick-) and Dragonflies (trollsländor), Bush crickets (vårtbitare) and Spiders (spindlar).
Equipment
I have mainly used a Pentax K-3 camera with a Pentax 300 lens and 18-135 lens to take the pictures found on this website. In my digital darkroom is found Adobe Photoshop CC 2015, and Adobe Lightroom CC .
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wildlifeaspo.com 