Welcome
to David Element's Wildlife Web Pages...1
See
animals portrayed in their natural surroundings....
HAIRY-FOOTED
FLOWER BEE Anthophora plumipes
(m)
YouTube
- David has recently
started to upload some of his short wildlife films to
YouTube (from February 2013) on the 'DavidPElement'
channel. These may be located by searching for "david
element" in the YouTube search
engine': http://www.youtube.com/ . The videos
have been edited to illustrate authentic animal behaviour
as you would expect to see it - i.e. you will be able to
observe wild creatures behaving naturally in their own
habitats as opposed to seeing artificially concentrated
and dramatically edited bursts of activity so typical of
television wildlife films. The film clips have been made
using small digital video cameras, often positioned at
very close range to the subjects. Any background noises
are incidental and often of human origin. There is a
short descriptive introduction for each film and they are
presented without any verbal commentary.
New Books:
For further information
and illustrations please see: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/davidelement/bookcovers.htm:
- David is in the
process of publishing an ongoing series of 21 x 28cm high
quality full colour hardback books (October 2011
- present). In order to cater for individual customer
requirements some of these titles are also available in
smaller and/or softcover formats (see specifications) and
as their contents may be viewed in full by using the
hyperlinks below on-line potential purchasers are advised
to take full advantage of this facility prior to buying
any books. The titles currently available are:
- These books may be
previewed in full on-line (they are best viewed
at a 150% screen setting using Google Chrome, Firefox or
an IE9-compatible setting as the page-turning software
may not be functional with older browsers). Note
that these publications may be revised at any time as new
photographic material becomes available.
Illegal Copying!
- Please use the following
link for Terms and Conditions for
Use of Material. It has become apparent that
certain other web sites have been advertising illegally
copied images from these pages and from
other photography web sites as 'royalty-free'
wallpaper. No permission has been
sought for the use of these photographs and none has been
granted (their use is therefore in
breach of international copyright law
- see: COPYRIGHT page for clarification) and it
may be considered to be an act of theft. There are two
legally acceptable processes whereby the photographs
shown on these pages may be obtained at high enough
resolution for reproduction, namely by contacting the
photographer directly by e-mail or by purchasing them
from a legitimate photographic agency (full details are
available by using the hyperlink at the beginning of this
paragraph). It is perfectly acceptable for the images to
be printed at low resolution for non profit-making
private use but they may not be reproduced on other web
sites or in any other form of publication without the
express permission of the photographer.
Navigation
- 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 if the identity of a subject is already known or
suspected. 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. Having at long last
added up a total it has been discovered that there are
illustrations of over 800 animal species
included on this site.
- 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. 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.
- These thumbnails will
directly connect the user to the original pages where
full size images of the required subject(s) will be
displayed. Note that in some cases the thumbnails will be
other subjects from the same pages 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. Search engines may
restrict their thumbnail displays to a maximum of about
1,000 (random) images, meaning that a substantial
proportion of the pictures on this site may be omitted
unless a more specific search is performed - e.g. by
using the scientific name of the required species.
- 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.
BLACK GUILLEMOT Cepphus
grylle (m)
- 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.
© David Element: david.element@ukgateway.net
Site established December 2000
(Latest Update: 13/3/2013)
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