Gugny, Poland

So a while ago I went on a year's work placement in Germany and during this time I had the opportunity to go on a field trip to Gugny, Poland. We went there to catch some more Common and Pygmy shrews for a project. I had a great time and Poland was absolutely beautiful, we were quite close to a large national park so there was plenty of nature out and about. I thought I would put up some of the pictures I took.

Landscape

The first thing I noticed about Poland was the flatness, I'm used to the hills of Scotland, but here the horizon stretched for miles.

There was also a lot of water, what would look like a wide expanse of grass would actually turn out to be very marshy.

The forests were very beautiful, the trees were a lot taller and thinner than I'm used to seeing in Scotland.

 Vertebrates

There were quite a lot of vertebrates around. There was a fox that would spend every morning sniffing around the nearby meadow, but I never got a good picture of him. There were also plenty of grass snakes around - a real novelty for me since I had never seen wild snakes out and about before. 

A Grass snake 

A wagtail

And then there were the moose. We spent most of the week trying to find them, but hadn't had much luck. At one point we were checking traps at night when there was suddenly a huge crashing noise as a moose ran away from us. We eventually found the one in the picture below, and then after that we saw many more.

The first moose we found

A moose shoulder blade I found in the woods

And then, of course, there were the animals we were there for - the common and pygmy shrews. These guys were also pretty elusive and we had a hard time catching them in the traps. But there were plenty voles.

A vole we caught

Invertebrates

I enjoy taking pictures of invertebrates as if they stay still I can get really close with my old camera and get some decent pictures. 

Scorpion fly

  

Brimstone butterfly

Plants

I also saw some beautiful plants