A swamp. A small one, let's say 20x30 meters. Cloudberries getting ready for the coming winter, few meagre birches and a pine, and a wide angle lens. Two afternoons of pure visual joy, spent deep in the soaked moss as a child playing in a puddle, and with the same amusement.

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.

Remember those whooper swans from "Synchronized Swimming"?
They clearly didn't just swim together.

One to end it.

The month just gone has been one of the warmest in the last 50 years, here in Dalarna. Wind, temperatures regularly above zero (even today, December the 31st, a day in which we use to struggle against -25/30°) and frequent rain.
I could well have stayed in Northern Italy to get such a weather...
Consequently, that has been a really poor photo month, with a bare landscape, little and dirty snow, grass emerging in the meadows, and wide sections of underwood entirely green.
For this end of the month (and year), then here it is a shot from its beginning.
Have a Happy 2014, everyone.

Difficult as usual photographing trees, whether they are dead or alive, standing out or fallen. The bidimensional representation debase them, and the final blow is given them by the inadequate amount of pixels of the web vision. However... here they are four shots from Norrfällsviken Nature Reserve in High Coast, which boasts, beyond the beautiful pinewood, the so called "klapperfält" (fields of rubbles), vast accumulation of rounded stones covererd in map lichen, once the bottom of the sea.

How many chances are there to find two aspens showing the same pattern of the characteristic lichen’s spots, and one tree close to the other? Seemingly, many more than you could expect, if you consider that it took me just a hour to find them. Or, maybe, I’ve just picked a lottery winner without even being aware of that...

The gift December brings me is the gold from the scarce water which still freely flows in the rivers, colored by the winter sun reflected by snow-covered trees; or the amber tone of tannins dissolved in it, made ​​evident by a white, spotless ice which is forming as I see it, in the very moment a new wave touches an icy rock.
It is the silver forest encrusted with thick rime, when it’s already freezing but little snow has come.
It is the red of the pines lit by the last sunset moment, standing out against the bluish shadow as corals or sea fans in an underwater picture.
Entirely natural colors, migrated like you see them from the original scene to the memory card, and from there to the screen ... which makes the gifts even more precious.