Tag: Photography

Austrian Alps: up and down Schafberg

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

Schafberg, Salzkammergut, Austria, June 2025

Welcome to a big blog of sunny alpine images, from my walking highlight of the year so far. Down we go!

My wife and I travelled by train to the Austrian Alps this summer, and we took one more train to reach the top of Schafberg (1782m) – the Schafbergbahn.

The images here are in chronological order as we descended, trying not to be too distracted as we picked our way down through the rocky tracks. I would recommend using at least one walking pole while doing this walk because it is so steep. The walk was nearly 8 miles and took us about 5 hours (because I stop a lot to take photos).

To the south-west you can see the high peaks of the Dachstein range (3600m), an area we haven’t explored yet.

The dramatic peak of Spinnerin seen from the top of Schafberg

This walk is simply heading down the main (uneven and steep) paths to Wolfgangsee, ending up at St. Gilgen. You can do this as a daytrip from Salzburg, but you need to get the boat to the train station.

You can stay on Schafberg for the night in the hotel, or you can just have lunch and enjoy the views.

You’ll have to get approval from the alpine choughs though, they rule the roost up there.

The first inverts I noticed were these hoverflies (probably droneflies) feeding on this brassica.

This willow shrub was growing out of one of the viewpoints (see below), and had lots of insects waiting for their close up. This is a saw-fly.

This chrome beetle is in the Genus Chrysolina.

This is one of the Cercopis froghoppers.

To put these pics in context, here’s me taking the photos above!

And a video to show some of the lakes to the north.

I love scorpion-flies and this photo nicely shows the faux-stinger on the insect’s tail. This landed on my wife’s arm, as with the images below.

This is one of those tiny solitary wasps, possibly a gall-wasp.

Globeflower is a common occurrence in the Alps.

Mountain pine is like a shrub dotted around the alpine grasslands.

The limestone can be seen where the grasslands can’t grow. Thankfully the decline wasn’t as steep as this on the main path, but it wasn’t that far off.

The butterflies were not as numerous as they were lower down on Zwölferhorn, but there were a good number of fritillaries. iNaturalist is suggesting this is pearl-bordered frit.

On the rocky outcrops of the path the flowers were a-bloomin’. This is kidney-vetch, unless I’m mistaken.

Silvery-yarrow is a new species for me.

Globe flowers are a group I remember well from the Swiss Alps, they are probably more of a spring species than in mid-June. Not to be confused with the buttercup globeflower seen above.

I think this is rock thyme, which looks a lot like ground-ivy.

The views are spectacular along this part of the walk, so it’s a matter of looking at the plants and butterflies around your feet, and the vistas beyond, without tripping up!

The train meets you as the steepest stretch of the walk comes to an end. The gradient is nicely illustrated here.

You pass the Gasthof Schafberg-Alpe which is not in use at the moment. It’s the site of the station before the top of Schafberg. You can jump out here and walk up, or get the train back down. We continued on to St. Gilgen, down through the woods.

The ground levels out here and the walking is gentler for a time. The views are some of the most awe-inspiring I’ve encountered.

There are a number of wooden huts in this part of the walk, which make for helpful foreground subjects, with Dachstein in the distance.

As per my previous Austrian Alps post, the only orchids on show were early-purples.

The meadows were looking mighty fine.

It’s at this point that you can see how far you’ve come (literally) as the path then moves into woodland.

The shade was welcome, but it was very steep and winding.

This is probably another pearl-bordered frit, feeding on a plant I actually have in my garden here but that grows wild in the mountains – perennial cornflower.

Don’t worry you can’t get poisoned through your screen. This is deadly nightshade, also known as henbane, growing in the woods below Schafberg.

Now, this is the biggest orchid I’ve ever seen. My foot in the image on the right should show just how tall this is – knee-height. Does anyone know what on earth is happening here – is it some kind of hybrid?

This is an out-of-focus phone pic but it’s a species I don’t see often – spiked rampion.

On a fallen tree across the track I found a nice collection of wolf’s milk slime mould. I was too tired to pop them.

We arrived in the village of Winkl and soon we were among hay meadows.

This brown-black carpenter ant was poised on a fencepost, perfect for a pic. There were a couple higher up on Schafberg, so it must have been one of their ‘flying-ant days’ as we say in England.

Another species that I only see when in Europe is this buck’s-beard, growing at the roadside.

Having descended to the shore of Wolfgangsee, there were these lovely willow-leaved yellow oxeyes growing at the edge of the path.

To end, I was quite tired by this point and wondered what on earth was happening. This is a mix of phone pics and mirrorless camera pics, of the scene of a dead horsefly being eaten by a cinnamon bug. If you look more closely you can see a red mite on the head of the bug, so the mite is the winner!

Thanks for reading.

Macro | Austrian Alps | Support my work

Wasps vs. spiders

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

Saturday 31st May felt like a passing of the seasons, with spring departing and summer arriving. That could be seen in the invertebrate world, with more summer species out there in my garden.

This post is generally wasps and spiders, with some lovely little bees to calm you down afterwards.

As ever, some of these things are so ridiculously small that without magnification (in my case a macro lens) you (I) wouldn’t necessarily see them.

I should have known it was going to be a good photography day when this little jumping spider appeared in my kitchen sink! The light was rubbish so I’ve had to draw out the shadows and ‘de-noise’ these photos a bit. I’m unsure of the exact species, but I do get an apparently uncommon oak jumping spider in my garden/near the house sometimes, and this may be one.

While we’re on spiders, here’s a wasp – a spider-hunting wasp! I’ve learned that sitting down on the grass by a shrub for 15 minutes isn’t just a forest-bathing exercise, it’s also a good way to allow the life to move around you. One fence post was being explored by this very busy spider-hunter. And then, something amazing happened.

On a vacant fencepost (that’s just how I consider them now) a spider appeared at the top. The spider-hunting wasp saw their moment and burst onto the post, but missed the spider by milliseconds!

The spider-hunting wasps paralyse their prey and then carry them away to a cache. It’s pretty grizzly, but if you think that wasps have been in existence for over 100million years, and spiders, gosh, they’ve been around for over 300million (humans 200k and unlikely to make 1million at this rate), it’s something that’s been going on for a long time. If you’re annoyed about one species of wasp bothering you, imagine how spiders felt when 100million years later a spider-hunting wasp evolves from nowhere!

This is around the time when I begin to notice the very tiny yellow-faced bees (Hylaeus). I’m happy to identify them to that level, and don’t really take it any further.

And here we have some of the ‘best’ images I’ve taken this year. This yellow-faced bee is probably less than 4mm in length. Here it’s nectaring on the stamens of a cultivated garden hypericum. This was grown from a cutting taken from my grandmother-in-law’s garden and is a very good plant for pollinators, though it does need maintaining. I love the way the bee uses the stamen a bit like an Elvis impersonator on a standing microphone. Ah-huh-huh.

Here’s a bumblebee for scale!

I don’t think I’ve seen as many honey bees as in recent years, but there was a glut of them around May. There are reports of problems in the U.S. this year (bit of an understatement, considering who’s running things there).

This solitary bee was visiting the flag iris in our little pond. I do enjoy the bee’s sideways escape. Not sure of the species, might be one of the Andrena mining bees.

I will now make like this bee and leave it there. Thanks for reading.

Macro | Support my work

Sicilian honey lilies

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

May has been a very productive month for macro photos for me, especially in my garden. These photos were taken on 8th May 2025 in that town garden in West Sussex.

We have a flowerbed for growing berries that is also home to these unusual alliums (honey garlic or Sicilian honey lily). On the 8th May they were just beginning to unseal themselves, releasing the flower heads. I have bee-heavy photos of this plant to share of the following days, and this spring has made me realise just how attractive this allium is for bees. The bumblebees can’t get enough! Stay tuned.

The oaks were in full-leaf by this point, this sapling somewhere between the red, yellow and green.

I don’t know what this invertebrate is or was, but I’ve seen it over the years attached to the stems of broom (which had such a good year in 2025). I am guessing it’s a species of moth that has pupated into an adult moth, and that this is the chrysalis. #NoMothExpert.

I think this may actually be the same early mining bee I posted about last week! Not sure.

I really like this photo of a fly (no ID yet). I wonder if that’s some kind of sugary solution on the berries. I enjoy the fly’s awkward splaying between fruit. Why not?

The light was working against me here as our friend was on the underside of a leaf. This is one of the Issus planthoppers. It doesn’t look like it, but the head is in focus.

And finally, the starlings were still feeding the nestlings at this point, quite an tiring time for them. They are one of my favourite birds, but are in serious decline (51% between 1995 and 2016) due to habitat loss and historic use of pesticides. You can help them by not using things like Roundup (glyphosate), by putting out fresh water for them to drink/bathe in, and potentially putting up a nestbox if you can.

Thanks for reading.

Macro | Support my work

Rhinoceros beetle on Dartmoor 🦏

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

I spent the end of April in Dartmoor National Park, but not quite staying on Dartmoor as the initiated would say. It was unseasonably dry and warm, resulting in a large moor-fire days after we left. Looking at the state of the moor (below) it was hardly surprising. Underfoot it was tinder dry.

What do we do about wildfires, regardless of who or what started them? Whenever there’s a fire you do get calls for more trees in upland areas and for a ban on agricultural fires and restrictions on sheep grazing. Dartmoor’s hills are southern England’s uplands, holding the highest points in the region.

And breathe…

I had some time to take a few purist macro images, some with a does-it-all lens and some with my phone. Here are the results.

The first stop was Devon Wildlife Trust’s Dart Valley Nature Reserve. We often sit here and take in the scenery and birdsong. It’s special.

Gorse was flowering widely across Dartmoor. It’s also know as ‘chag’ historically on Dartmoor, giving the name to the village of Chagford.

Hawthorn was leafing across the landscape, an iconic moorland tree in Devon. The leaves are edible when young and have been known in the past as ‘bread and butter’.

Ferns were uncoiling in the more shaded areas. I think this is hard fern.

Juniper haircap moss is one that produces its ‘sporophyte’ in April. The very dry mosses were still able to do their thing.

Stonecrops I’m not expert on, but you can see their succulent-ness up close.

This solitary wasp of some kind was on my trousers. It was really small, as you can see from the threading of the fabric.

They’re not great images but this jumping spider arrived on my fleece. I would need extension tubes for better close-ups. It’s one of the heliophanus species.

I was really drawn to the pond skaters making merry in the side pools by the river bank. It was only when I took some photos that I saw that they were actually mating. The final image focuses on their legs as they bend the surface of the water to stay afloat.

Later in the week we did a long walk around Lustleigh, through the picturesque bluebell rainforests above the River Bovey. These woods are spectacular and very rich in wildlife.

Wild garlic was in flower, mainly found along the lanes rather than deep in the woodland.

Dartmoor is a good place for cool beetles. This violet oil beetle was nibbling on some lesser celandine leaves. This is a phone pic, cropped, so not perfect focus or detail.

My hiking companion miraculously found this long-horn beetle on one of the many mossy oaks we passed. It’s a greater thorn-tipped longhorn beetle.

There was a large birch tree that had fallen across a path, and just as I was about to slide over it I saw my first ever rhinoceros beetle on UK soil. Again I only really could get a phone pic, but it still did a reasonable job.

Elsewhere the early purple orchids were flowering. They are such beautiful plants.

And finally, on another walk near South Zeal I managed to get a few decent images of a species from one of my favourite bee families – the nomad bees. This could be a flavous nomad bee, but I’m not sure. They are beautiful and quite hard to catch in time for a photo.

Thanks for reading.

Macro | Dartmoor | Support my work

Oaks leaves like little fires

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

I’m still dining out on mid-April at the moment, it’s such a lovely time of year.

The broom (Cytisus scoparius) we planted several years ago has bloomed magnificently this year. It’s been a treat to both smell, and to see it attract a whole range of pollinators.

Dandelions have been all over social media recently with the recipes for ‘dandelion honey’. I am reliably informed that it’s jam or syrup rather than honey because you’re not a bee. It’s good that people are becoming more aware of dandelions which are incredibly important for pollinators.

We’ve expanded our berry bed in the garden to include an extra redcurrant, blueberry and gooseberry. Above are the lovely flowers of redcurrant.

My little laid hazel hedge is coming along nicely. These fresh red stems are a welcome sign.

As part of the hedge I’ve planted a couple of oaks that have been in pots in our garden for a number of years. One of the oaks is from my grandmother-in-law’s garden near Epping Forest, the other grown from an acorn from Dulwich Wood. I love the redness of the leaves when they first appear, whether or not these are tannins I would need to check the science.

Elsewhere the sycamore is now leafing. Soon these will be sticky with aphid honeydew. The sparrows and blue tits will be hoovering the aphids up to feed their nestlings.

Speaking of those little devils, our swift box has been moved-into after 3 years of waiting for something to happen. Of course it would be best if swifts were there, but sparrows are also red-listed and their habitat is being lost as people are forcing them out of the eaves. Much of that is probably unintentional, but it’s still something we need to look at.

In the invertebrate world, the droneflies have calmed down a bit and are willing to pose for their macro close-up. This is probably a tapered dronefly (Eristalis pertinax).

This is my first decent set of images of a solitary bee this year. It’s probably one of the mining bees (Andrena) but I don’t have an ID yet.

Another solitary bee species had found its way into our living room. I took a few photos before letting the little bee back out into the world.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Any pond will do

Daniel Greenwood9 Comments

On Friday 11th April I was hanging out in the garden when I glanced over at the small container pond on our brick patio. It’s an old metal wash basin filled with plants and, well, water.

Birds bathe in it, foxes drink from it, and something rather special now lives in it.

The first thing I saw in the ‘pond’ were two eyes looking back at me, and two big arms and webbed hands (are they hands?) holding onto one of the plastic plant containers.

Phone pic for scale

It says a lot about the state of nature in Britain that frogs are such a cause of excitement. We have obliterated our ponds in England, but there is a movement to try and bring back some of the most important ones – the oldest ones lost from farms.

It’s been so dry for the time of year, wildlife is really suffering with the lack of water. If you have the chance to build any kind of pond you should do it! We don’t have enough space in our garden to dig a ‘proper pond’, but we have been able to use a container we bought at an antique dealer. Without it, where would the frog go?

Elsewhere I’ve noticed the number of drone flies has ebbed a bit, but there are still plenty around. This is probably a tapered-drone fly, a species of hoverfly.

Sitting on this piece of charcoal (which you may notice is now being colonised by a very small moss) was a little spider. iNaturalist has suggested this is a fox spider.

It’s rather cuddly isn’t it? No?

At night we’ve begun to notice a powerful fragrance around the house. It’s a bit like honeysuckle but is probably a cheesewood, a species of plant from New Zealand. This grows in a neighbouring garden but reaches over to us. It’s absolutely covered in pollinators and the smell- wow. It doesn’t seem to be invasive so could be a good option for your garden if you like pollinator-friendly shrubs.

Thanks for reading.

Sussex Weald: song thrush rules

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

I’ve been making an effort to go for a walk in my local slice of the Sussex Weald before work in recent weeks. The impact it has on my brain, body and soul is profound, having lost my connection with woodland somewhat recently.

Early spring is a special time in woodland, watching the the leaves appear, the first spring birds, and the woodland flowers. It is so much better than those hot, shady and sterile days of summer, in my view.

The chiffchaffs have been arriving, but the song thrush rules this chunk of the Weald. Its repeated phrases echo through the still leafless branches.

Wild branches against ranks of pine and birch.

Those birches, growing on old heathland, waiting for the onset of new leaves.

A birch tree harassed by honeysuckle, catching the morning light.

A green beech tree with lots of moss and algae.

The ride, with pines reaching across on either side.

Silver birches among bluebell leaves.

An old beech tree.

Bluebell leaves appearing below a mess of beech twigs and old leaves.

The grassy banks of the woodland ride. I often hear firecrest singing along these edges where the ivy climbs and a few evergreen trees like the cypresses grow.

Thanks for reading.

Dartmoor waxcaps

Daniel Greenwood6 Comments

This is a showcase of the posh mushroom pics I gathered with my proper camera during a visit to the wonderful Dartmoor National Park in November 2024. Mad props to my wife who is chief squirrel during these Devonian photo forages.

The photos were taken on Sunday 10th November 2024.

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of fungi. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.

A reminder that I am not encouraging people to pick or remove mushrooms in these areas. You could very easily clear all the mushrooms we saw within minutes. I think that would be sad because it would mean other people wouldn’t get to see them and learn or be inspired by them. I think with rare species like waxcaps that are featured here, we should be taking photos and submitting them to apps like iNaturalist or Plantlife’s waxcap campaign. In some areas that would be illegal anyway, due to site protections.

While I don’t believe 2024 will go down as a vintage mushroom season, there were a lot of lovely waxcaps to be found on the moor in a place we’ve been visiting since 2016. Moorlands seem to be quite good for waxcaps, not that I know why, and also for lichens because they are rocky, wet and the air is fresh.

I’ll post the images in chronological order for my own sanity.

This is the landscape where the fungi lived – moorland with a view towards the Teign estuary.

The first fungal find were these eyelash cups (Scutellinia) growing on animal dung! Plenty more dungi to come.

Waxcaps make up the crux of the mushrooms we found. These beauties are butter waxcaps (Hygrocybe ceracea).

Not to be outdone, some very photogenic sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare) were found as we climbed the moor.

These mottlegills (Panaeolus) are quite common in places with grazing livestock like Dartmoor ponies.

My best guess is that this was one of the moss bells (Galerina).

These lichens are beautiful. I don’t see them very often because I have to travel west see moorland. They’re probably gritty British soldier lichens (Cladonia floerkeana).

I’m unsure what this species is, but it’s a beauty.

As we approached the more remote moorland (in terms of people living out there) the waxcaps began to appear in the cropped turf. This is another example of how important grazing to some degree is, and how it mimics very ancient processes. These mushrooms would not grow in closed-canopy woodlands.

This is one of the red waxcaps, but I’m unsure if it’s honey waxcap or not. It looks too orange for scarlet waxcap.

This is one of several species under the umbrella of blackening waxcap or witches’ bonnet (Hygrocybe conica complex).

This isn’t an award winning image but it’s likely to be meadow coral (Calvulinopsis corniculata).

This is a species I only really see in the west of England or Ireland. It’s one of the dog lichens (Peltigera).

These are crimson waxcaps (Hygrocybe punicea), stunning mushrooms indeed. There were some young men passing by who stopped to admire the colours of these impressive shrooms.

I don’t have an identification yet for this gorgeous waxcap and the closest I can guess is a colour variation of parrot waxcap (Gliophorus psittacinus).

This is meadow waxcap (Hygrocybe pratensis), often fan-like, always best photographed from ground level.

I think this is golden waxcap (Hygrocybe chlorophana).

Now we’re back at the dungi. This was a very small mushroom, growing on a rabbit or hare dropping.

These are probably dung roundhead (Protostropharia semigloblata). Despite the animal dung, they’re beautiful!

I’m not up on my corals and suchlike, but these are probably in this family.

The walk ended in a little graveyard, great places for waxcaps, by the way. That was evidenced again by this clutch of what I would say were scarlet waxcaps (Hygrocybe coccinea).

Phew!

Thanks for reading.

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of fungi. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.

My 2024 in photography

Daniel Greenwood6 Comments

Another year completed and lessons learned. Creatively I have found a balance with my equipment and the actual process of photography. I’m into my 6th year of working with Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses, giving more space to enjoy the process of gathering photos – walking – because the equipment is light.

Cameras used include Olympus EM-5 Mark III, Oly EM-1 Mark III, Olympus TG-6 Tough compact camera, and Pixel 7a phone camera.

These photos should show the range of things I like to take pics of – not just mushrooms! 😂

With the privileges available to me – health, location, resources, freedom of expression – here are my photographic highlights of 2024:

January

I did a couple of long walks in Sussex at the beginning of the year, exploring some new locations around the South Downs. I visited St. Botolphs church for the first time, one of Sussex’s special ones among thousands of already significant churches. Last year I set up a gallery for my fledging church photographs project which can be viewed here.

February

This felt like the moment of the light returning after the dark winter months. The Downs at Amberley are my gateway to the South Downs, and walking here is always worth the gentle climb.

March

In March I visited Dublin for a weekend and took in the sights along the great river Liffey.

For a friend’s birthday we spent the weekend in York, which gave me a chance to take some compact camera pics of a few of the oak timber framed buildings. I’ve added a gallery for my ‘Oak Timbers’ project here.

April

I got married in April so there wasn’t time for much beyond the odd local walk. I was trying out my new Pixel 7a, bought because of its value and reported image quality. The camera is spectacular, I just wish it wasn’t a G**gle product. I blogged about it here.

May

Ah, memories. In May we went on our honeymoon to Austria and Switzerland, all by train. You may be sick of reading about that! I am definitely not sick of blogging about it though!

This was one of those one-off photos experiences. Thankfully the weather held and we saw the mountains in much of their glory.

June

A bit of a lost month for photography because I started (yet another) new job and had to settle into a new routine. The highlight was probably these sawfly larvae which ate through some of the leaves on my gooseberry. Blog here.

July

“July, July, it never seemed so strange”, as the Decemberists sang. I caught Covid and didn’t really get back to normal for 3 months afterwards (Vitamin D is very important, people). My macro work was reduced by the evil contagion but I did find some nice bugs near home to share.

August

I managed to pap some pretty fine inverts in August, with this beautiful ichneumon wasp seen in my garden. I’ve not got anywhere near enough out of my Olympus EM-1 Mark iii and 60mm macro, but this showed just how good Micro Four Thirds cameras are for macro.

Another strongpoint for M43 cameras is that they can ‘stack’ images internally, something now copied by the big hitters. This is a composite of about 10 photos the camera has laced together to ensure the depth of field covers a deeper focus range. It means more of the, rather gruesome, subject can be seen in detail.

September

In September I made my first ever visit to the iconic sea stacks at Downpatrick Head on the North Mayo Coast in Ireland. Mayo has an international dark skies designation so I was able to mess around with the Milky Way. But for the astro photo I haven’t processed these images yet so here are a couple of phone photos.

October

As I have lamented on my Fungi Friday blog, 2024 was not the best mushroom season. But there are always things to find out there. I found this knocked over fly agaric, which was in perfect condition, ready for its portrait.

November

Autumn is a time for Dartmoor for me and my wife, and despite colds we managed some walks onto the moors in the National Park. We found an amazing array of waxcaps, like the crimsons above, which you can see in full on Fungi Friday.

On the last day of November I hiked with my South Downs amigo from Ditchling into the mist. This is the much-photographed Ditchling dew pond, shrouded in mist.

December

The weather in December was very grey and damp, and all the Christmas demands gave me only one meaningful walk – to Pulborough Brooks in West Sussex.

Thanks for all your support in 2024 and wishing you peace and happiness in 2025.

Swiss Alps: mountain woodland flowers at Pfinstegg, Grindelwald🚡

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

Continuing my series of posts about the landscape of the Jungfrau mountains in Switzerland, here is a look at some of the woodland plants seen above Grindelwald.

Just to say: picking or trampling on wildflowers is not advised, and may be illegal in some locations. The meadows shown here form part of people’s livelihoods as well as being sensitive habitats. Woodlands are extremely sensitive to our footsteps so stick to designated paths where you can. Check the regulations around foraging before you go and show respect for people and wild plants, animals and fungi when you visit. There’s a lot of livestock around, usually behind fences, but they’re so noisy you can’t miss them.

The photos here are a mix of mirrorless camera and phone. The plants photos are mainly taken with my Pixel 7a, the landscape photos with my Olympus EM1 Mark III. All have been lightly processed.

The walk

The walk was a fairly short one in length, mainly due to the altitude and general tiredness from travelling. It would be a good one if you’re visiting from Interlaken on a day when it’s not worth going higher or it’s too early in the season.

The walk is about 2.5 miles and can be done more quickly if you’re not taking photos of plants!

All the high trails, including the Eiger Trail, were closed when we visited. Climate change may be making rockfall more common and therefore the higher trails are more dangerous.

It’s possible you can do this walk and see absolutely no one, but for a farmer or two, after you pass the toboggan run.

We took the Pfinstegg cable car up to the Berghaus restaurant, had some chips, and walked down to the village, past the toboggan run.

What you can’t hear is the sound of middle-class Americans talking about their Adriatic travel plans.

One image I wanted to share was this exhibition of alpine heritage. Here you can see the array of bells used in the Jungfrau for cattle management. The sound of the cowbells is one of the signifiers that you are in the Swiss Alps. Of course the same can be said for many mountain regions, but each one has its cultural differences. That’s a different blog entirely!

Alpine flowers (1300m)

One of the more common sightings in the alpine zone was alpine butterwort, (Pinguicula alpina).

Another common one was shrubby milkwort (Polygaloides chamaebuxus).

A regular of this habitat was leafless stemmed globularia (Globularia nudicaulis). They look like little lilac mops.

At this point the views of Grindelwald began to be swallowed by the spring woodlands.

In the woods

As you can imagine, the water was crashing down as the snow melted. A lot of work is going into observing the changes in the glaciers in the Swiss Alps, which is happening at an alarming rate here.

You can get views of the Lower Grindelwald Glacier from this walk (though this was taken lower down). This glacier shrunk by over a mile between 1973 and 2015.

I love a new violet species that’s easier to identify than ours at home. This is twoflower violet (Viola biflora) and was only seen in the woods at the edge of lanes.

It’s always nice to find globeflower (Trollius europaeus), a species of buttercup.

This was a new species for me – may lily (Maianthemum bifolum). It looks more similar to something like black bryony or bindweed to the untrained eye (this one).

This cranefly was resting on the leaves of yellow archangel, a woodland plant we seem to be losing in the UK.

It’s always a joy to encounter herb paris (Paris quadrifolia). I think the columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) seen here is probably a garden escape, though it is an ancient woodland plant as well, so I may be wrong. I hope it’s the wild one!

There was more herb paris, but only in the woods.

There were a couple of valerians. This one is three-leaved valerian (Valeriana tripteris). It was growing in wet areas.

I also saw marsh valerian (Valeriana dioica).

Now, there weren’t a lot of orchids out at the time as it was probably too early in the season. But this is bird-nest orchid (Neottia nidus-avis), which I’ve only really seen in the chalky woods of the North Downs in England.

This is fly honeysuckle (Lonicera xylosteum), a strangely shrubby honeysuckle compared with the climber we have in the UK. It’s been introduced to Britain but I’ve never bumped into it.

Hillside meadows

Let’s just take in the views of the Wetterhorn for a bit…

I’d like to be out walking in World Heritage landscapes every week, but alas, it will just have to be once or twice in life.

Looking south-west towards the Eiger.

Mountain sainfoin (Onobrychis montana) was one of the most eye-catching plants, growing at the edges of the lane if I remember rightly.

The spring really glows in this image, despite the misty conditions. The sycamores are coming into leaf.

This is a view down the valley where the train returns to Interlaken.

This is something I’d never seen before – a totemic welcome for Aaron who was born on 4th May 2024. Perhaps this is a tradition in this part of Switzerland?

The views across towards Grindelwald First come into view as space opens up on the woods. You can see all of the chalets that dot the meadows.

I was intrigued by these rustic chalets that were more indicative of a rural way of life, compared with the guesthouses in the valley. It looked lived-in or at least used by people who made use of wood products. What a lovely place to be able to escape to in the summer. Of course communities would have developed from these single dwellings across the Alps.

This image looks north towards the other side of the valley. The yellow hue in the meadows is either kidney vetch or birds-foot trefoil.

The lovely spiralling shell of a snail roosting in a tree.

These umbellifer-rich meadows were a joy to behold.

The lower we got (c.1000m) the more abundant yellow rattle become. This is probably Rhianthus serotinus.

This is the Black Lütschine, one of the rivers that flows into Lake Brienz. It was very powerful. Its source is the Lower Grindelward Glacier, pictured earlier in this post.

The meadows around people’s houses – this looks like an orchard – were in fine condition.

Thanks for reading.

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of our landscapes. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.