Welcome to David Element's Wildlife Web Pages...1

See animals portrayed in their natural surroundings....

---------------------A HOVERFLY Chrysotoxum festivum in flight

NORMAL SERVICE HAS BEEN RESUMED!

This web site has been inaccessible for several weeks due to factors beyond my control. Apologies to anyone who has been unable to use it or trying to contact me.

David

Please use the following link for Terms and Conditions for Use of Material.

Navigation on this website has been designed to be as simple as possible both within and between subject types. If you go to the Site Index page and click on a title or a thumbnail image then this will open the first subject-specific page. If you click on a number you will open the selected page within a subject. You may then navigate within that subject or return to the Site Index page as desired. Alternatively the Common Name or Scientific Name Indexes may be used. The links on these pages will lead directly to one or more pages containing photograph(s) of the named subject(s). Both of these indexes have been arranged in alphabetical order although for the Scientific Name Index this applies to generic names only.

Numerous HTML keyword meta-tags have been inserted to facilitate detailed species searches in English and Latin and these are now available via many search engines (Google is highly recommended). As these name tags have been entered as separate words (and some English names are very non-specific) it is suggested that a search is entered using the Latin (scientific) name in lower case and with each word in quotation marks as follows: Generic name + Specific name, e.g. "chrysotoxum"+ "festivum". This will narrow the search considerably and save time.

Thumbnail images of many of the photographs shown on these pages are provided by the excellent Google search engine. These are available as a 'gallery' if a Google 'Images' search is performed using the photographer's name in quotation marks, i.e. "david element". Guest photographer images may be located in the same manner by substituting the guest photographer's name. Individual species searches may be performed in the manner described above using the 'Images' search option - use of the scientific name may narrow this type of search, particularly for commonly photographed subjects. The full available selection of pictures on this site will be displayed by clicking on the hyperlink: http://images.google.com/images?q=+site:www.david.element.ukgateway.net+%22david+element%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

These thumbnails will directly connect the user to the original page where a full size image of the required subject will be displayed. Note that in some cases the thumbnail will be of another subject from the same page and that the copyright of certain images on this site may belong to other photographers. As the search engine images have been cached, some links will lead to revised pages or dead ends if the URLs have been revised. Some search engines appear to restrict their thumbnail displays to a maximum of 1,000 images.

The photographic content of this site is constantly being upgraded and higher quality digital images are being added as they become available (see Site Announcements for details).

There are now about 1,400 of the author's own photographs on this website and several guest photographer pages have also been included. See Site Index for full details of these and David's other linked wildlife web pages. It is hoped that these pictures will help to stimulate an interest in the Natural World. Some of the images may also be useful for identification and certain pages have been deliberately formulated with this purpose in mind. Other pages simply present general illustrations of their subject matter.

Accurate identification to species level is not always possible from photographs and serious students of Natural History will be aware of the need for academic reference material (see below). Most of the illustrations are of British species with some additional images from France, Northern Spain and Italy. Comprehensive coverage should not be expected - for example there are in excess of 23,000 species of insect in the UK alone and no individual could reasonably be expected to find, identify and photograph them all! There are also restrictions on the available webspace, so colourful or easily recognisable species may have been given priority on some pages.

The photographer accepts full responsibility for any misidentifications and would be grateful for any feedback via e-mail at david.element@ukgateway.net from authoritative sources if any incorrect captions are noticed as this helps to improve the quality of the data on this site.

Please note that unsolicited e-mails will be deleted without being opened if the subject message is unclear or if the the sender has not been fully identified as the author does not wish to import computer viruses. Any e-mail photograph attachments should be of low resolution only, sent as individual messages for each photograph and the date (if known) and location should be given.

Correct identification of such a wide range of subjects is very demanding, particularly as a spare-time pursuit, and although all of the included subjects have been carefully vetted some errors will be inevitable. Classification of species is under constant scrutiny and scientific (Latin) names may have been modified since the source reference works were written. Correspondents should note that it is impossible to identify many invertebrates even with the aid of a good quality reference photograph or a detailed description unless they are particularly distinctive. There are many examples on-line of identifications based on a superficial resemblence to entirely different species. Several of the linked websites provide much more extensive and expert coverage of particular groups (see below).

A short bibliography has been given at the end of each title page. The listed works are mainly British reference books which will provide an in-depth analysis of their subjects. Certain books may be out of print but these may sometimes be available from libraries or the second-hand book market. Recommended suppliers like
Pembury Books http://www.pembooks.demon.co.uk/
E. W. Classey http://www.classeybooks.com/
NHBS http://www.nhbs.com/ or
Subbuteo http://www.wildlifebooks.com/ will send free catalogues upon request although much of the information contained should also be available on the suppliers' websites. Some areas of Natural History are very demanding and they may therefore be less well studied than the popular subjects and poorly represented in print with very few good books currently available. The above suppliers also advertise many top quality Continental publications and these are often illustrated to a very high standard.

There are ever-increasing numbers of excellent websites covering a broad range of Natural History subjects and some of these have been identified for reference purposes with hyperlinks provided for instant access from these pages. Most notable amongst these is the award winning 'ARKive' website: http://www.arkive.org/index.html. In many cases these sites contain links of their own and these will open up access to a wealth of useful information. Hyperlinks to this site are also being provided by an increasing number of other websites from Britain and abroad. These links are welcomed although the content of these sites is outside of the editorial control of the author and the accuracy of the information given cannot therefore be guaranteed. External links may become obsolete without the author's knowledge. The book and website lists are updated periodically.

The names of specific locations have deliberately been omitted in order to protect the more vulnerable species from disturbance or collection.

One other issue - please read the COPYRIGHT page for an explanation of the legal issues associated with the use of Internet website material. None of the photographs or text from this website may be reproduced in any form without the express permission of the author. This would constitute a breach of intellectual copyright law and legal action may be taken. Please see Site Announcements/Terms and Conditions for Use of Material.

Site established December 2000

(Latest Update: 1/9/2010)

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