The Finnish forests surrounding the area I stayed were just beautiful. The mixture of evergreens and deciduous species meant that the colours were even more stunning. The clean air also means that there are lots of lichens, all adding to the richness of the colour palette in this landscape. Finland is Europe’s most heavily forested country and cover 74.2% of the land area and being over sixteen timrees more forest per capita than other European countries, on average.
It was not surprising to see that this area supported a healthy population of the stunning red squirrel. Moving into their winter coat, these were simply stunning and ranged in colour from a sandy brown, through grey, to a russet red. They took full advantage of the food on offer , giving us all wonderful opportunities to watch and to photograph them. They really are the most endearing of mammals and their ability to pose for the camera is really quite wonderful.
From peeping around tree trunks to popping up in Autumnal undergrowth, it was almost as if they were really working the camera!
They are very fast movers though, so getting a good image is not as easy as it may seem! I would have quite happily spent all my days photographing just these beauties and I did spent quite a lot of time wandering the wooded paths on the look out for them.
I took lots of images and these are a few of my favourites …..
nnnn