The first warmth lowers the snow level, and the night cold makes it more compact; grouses then leave the tree tops and more likely are visible on the ground. This male capercaillie was weighting its territory with slow steps, taking position in the waiting of the right moment to start its daily spring shows. This is a picture from last week, and it was intended to be a greeting for the coming mating season. Actually, the greeting appears to be already outdated: this very morning, passing by the same place, I found this bird already showing off in its courting display, so far still without any attendance (at least from its own class...).
Click on the image to further enlarge it.
...and then it ends. Literally: a road sign says “here ends the public road”, and there, right there, at the end of “their” road, the lifeless corpses of almost 1.000 cars are resting: it's one of the two largest old car graveyard in Sweden. Chassis and rims, foils and coils and headlights and gaskets abandoned by a local car wrecker since the 40s, now make a gigantic monument to an era, the one of individual mobility, which has still to fade, differently from the millions of vehicles which fed it. And a monument to consumerism and to what's happening once we get rid of the consumed goods. And to the boundless power of Nature, which is step by step conquering the naked bodies of the cars, reclaiming the spaces that belong to her. It's been a quick visit, just a couple of hours of inspection in preparation for further in depth sessions and in different seasons, and nevertheless very rich in emotions and wonder, through several layers of reading, non only from a photographic standpoint; starting with that peculiar feeling in watching the “after” of such a daily tool, with which we use to have such an strict relationship.
It should have been just a couple of days of nature guiding, but because of the amount of things to see and the pleasantness of the participants it ended in a full week... full of wildlife, photos and high spirits. I'm talking of the visit paid me by the Marche section of AFNI (Italian Nature Photographers Association) here in Särna at the beginning of June. You can see some memories from the Family Album. Here it is now a selection of pictures they kindly shared with me to be in the Chronicles. Let's start with some landscapes... ...and let's finish with some animals.
 More than a bird: a living drill. That's the black woodpecker in brief. Essential element for the renewal and the biodiversity of the forest environment (the large holes it digs for nesting - being the only one capable to do it in that size - are reused by several other species of birds and even some mammals), I saw him dipping its beak in a trunk half a meter in diameter, working it as if it were of salt dough.
In these very days from that oval hole young red crests of chicks ready to fly are eyeing... a photo I'm not going to take: like almost all of the pictures at nest (of any species) it would feel as the old same deja vù, even beyond any ethical doubt; besides, the aesthetic and emotional potential that could be included would be miserable, far from deserving the slightest form of potential annoyance. I'm posting instead a shot made during a casual encounter: the very hard and poor backlight let itself to be converted without a protest in a B&W high contrast image, a technique I used to love a lot already in my (very distant) days in the darkroom, when I manipulated sheets of photomechanical film among stinking chemical mixtures... thinking about it now, in the Instagram era, seems a lot like a picture from medieval alchemy. Yet no retouching software is able to give me back the same feelings. Who knows, maybe it was just me being different back then. Young, for a start. 
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All site contents are: © Vitantonio Dell'Orto, all rights reserved worldwide. The Chronicles of Särna, and other stories from the North.
I live in Sweden, in Särna (Dalarna). The Chronicles are a photo diary about the nature (but not just) here around and from all the Scandinavian areas where my photo job takes me.
It is possible to purchase the pictures in these pages, as for all those in Exuvia, as signed prints. Here the info.
In Särna, close to national parks and nature reserves, our vandrarhem (family hostel) offers a simple but nice accommodation in private room for 21 euros a night (and even less if you are a group)
My book: "My Sweden - Tales from an Italian photographer in the North" is available in the bookstores and by the publisher.
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