Nature
Because we were born in the countryside and spent our youth there, we both find joy in nature! We like bird watching and the study of Botany, which give us many moments of pleasure at home and on travels.
The artist’s watercolours, paper and pens together with magnifying-glass, binoculars, small ones as well as a tube, will always alert a curious attendant at the Customs. The tripod for the big and heavy tube and the artist’s palette knife are nowadays travelling in the luggage department of the aeroplane.
Our children were always together with us on expeditions into woodlands, the Scandinavian high mountains, mushroom forests, isles in the Stockholm archipelago etc, and now when they are grown up they get a lot of pleasure from what they learned as kids.
The links lead to many interesting places in the virtual nature, and after visiting them you can go out in the real nature using your newly gained knowledge! Click on the pictures!
Space
About APOD –a new picture of the sky every day. Fabulous pictures!
Webcam from Jokkmokk in northern Sweden, at the polar circle – chance to see auroras! LIVE! and midnight sun during summer :-), take a look in the photo albums and travelogues, too!
Day and night world map – with information about where the sun and the moon are just now, and much more.
Ornitologi
House sparrow in Spanish? – bird names in many languages
The Owl Pages – All About Owls – photos, calls, books, art, mythology and more.
Snowy Owls – Nyctea scandiaca – Hedwig, Harry Potter’s owl!
Owlsome blog – “15 Fun and Interesting Facts About Owls”
Grönbena, Hemavan
Humlesuga, Betonica officinalis, Sollentuna
Sollentuna’s flora
Pär, together with many others have investigated the flora in Sollentuna. The area was divided into 269 squares 500×500 m, and each square was then searched and all species found noted. Many years later everything was saved in a database, and Pär developed a web site where you can see where each species was found (great fun, developed with PHP and MySQL). It is only available in Swedish, but if you know the names in Latin you can search for a particular plant and see a map of where it was found.
Naturligtvis
Fotografen Mattias Klum – KLUM PHOTOGRAPHY – you may have seen his photos in the National Geographic Society Magazine
Naturfotografernas förening – Nature photographers, Sweden– a very beautiful and informative web page, in pictures, about the Nature in Sweden (Swedish only)
Breeds of livestock
OSU’s Breeds of Livestock by World Region – Fun to know what the cows look like in Portugal.
Breeds of Livestock – All about all the species of livestock in the world with pictures (here a description of our own Nordic cow)
Species gateway
Species Gateway/Artportalen – report systems for birds, flowers, butterflies and moths.
NatureGate
In NatureGate you will find interesting information about hundreds of species in our nature, illustrated by top photographers. You can search among the species in many ways, for instance using the English or scientific name, the family or the genus. The identification tools are very helpful – try to determine species for flowers, trees and shrubs, butterflies or fish!
The web site has many kinds of contents, in addition to the identification tools, you will find bird songs, for instance. You can listen to almost all species described. Try pied flycatcher or white-tailed eagle for instance.
NatureGate works in eight different languages. Many of the species described appear in several continents.
Organisations
The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation
WWF – The Conservation Organization – The international site
Mordet i liljekonvaljeskogen – krabbspindel med blomfluga
A click for the forest – a click a day can save old forests
The Rainforest Site: Help Save Our Rainforests! – Rain forests – and go on and click on the other links which appear in the thanks-for-the-click page!
Online
For buying books etc. about nature and the environment.
Naturbokhandeln – in Swedish but with many international books and guides about bird watching, binoculars, rucksacks, etc!
Marine and wildlife art for sale and licensing – see Freebies and Fun Stuff (cute froggies on virtual postcards – gratis)
Whales and Dolphins – The Oceania Project – Just pick a whale or dolphin
Webbkamera LIVE from Africa – the best of them!
Webcam LIVE from Africa — The best of them!
For a few years, we could enjoy live webcam pictures (National Geographic Society) from a water hole in Botswana, only you, the animals and the crew at the camera are there! Very nice! No Safari tourist with flashing cameras were bursting in on roaring vehicles breaking the peace! After a long absence, Pete’s Pond is back! Now managed by Ustream.
But once in a while 30-40 elephants suddenly decided that they wanted to drink and have a bath, all at the same time, and then you will understand the true joy of splashing around in a pool! EVERYBODY in the water! 🙂
Perhaps you were lucky to be at the computer when a leopard arrived to drink …!
On YouTube, there are hundreds of short videos you can look at, taken from the webcam at Pete’s Pond!
Picture > taken from the computer screen on a warm and peaceful day, 10th of September 2007. A low angle view of the animals on the pond side
And in January, after much raining, the grass is high, there are lots of flowers, many kinds of birds are nesting in the trees, and the black and silvery wildebeests arrive with their beige calves.
