Onset of Spring

Onset of Spring
Onset of Spring

The nice thing about going to the same place again and again to sample for my research, is that I also get to see the changes that are happening in the forests during spring. The picture above is a nice example. I have camera traps (cameras with a heat and motion detector) in 10 different areas in the Netherlands to monitor the mammal fauna in forests. These camera traps take a picture every 12 hours, for me to see if the cameras were working all the time. Four weeks ago (29 April) I placed a camera trap in a forest in the Dunes near IJmuiden, and today (27 May) I collected it. When I arrived in the forest this afternoon, I did not recognize it! The forest had gone through a whole transformation. To visualize this, I took a time lapse picture from the first day, and one from the last day, and blended them together.