Wandering in Stenshuvud National Park

This day was spent exploring some of the attraction of Österlen i.e. Stenshuvud National Park and the hills at Brösarp. I haven´t been to this part of Skåne before even if I spent some days nearby during Eastern. That meant I had to check up the area before we left on Monday heading for Kullaberg.

I knew that there should be a nice seafront walk at Brantevik and that was how we began the day after eating breakfast. The weather wasn´t the best, but it was really nice to be out stretching one’s leg as much time have been spent just sitting in the car driving. We strolled along the seafront looking for interesting things to photo. We found many interesting things, both gardens, birds and flowers. It was nice to see both song birds and sea birds.

This is a picture of a Red-breasted Merganser that flew by during our morning walk in Brantevik. This isn´t a great picture in any way, but I wanted to show another type of bird picture. I like how the sea give the neutral background a little life. This should have been a backlight picture if there weren´t clouds between me and the bird and I think that would have made this picture more interesting.

Our next stop for the day were Stenshuvud National Park. It is situated just outside Kivik, a famous apple producing town, and is famous for its flora and fauna, but also the old fortress at the highest vantage point inside the park.

Stenshuvud was a big surprise to me and I really like it. The park teemed with life and you could hear bird chatter everywhere. The forest floor was all covered by the white Wood Anemone and the leaves on the Beeches and Hornbeams were light green, as they tend to be in the spring. We walked up to the old fortress making stops taking picture of the birds and flowers.

This is a Common Hepatica. A flower that is protected in parts of Sweden. We don´t see it often where I live so it was really nice to find it in Stenshuvud. There should be over 600 species of vascular plants here and I feel should really spend a couple of days exploring the park to really appreciate it more.

We headed towards Brösarp after our lunch stop in Kivik, to look at the hills just outside Brösarp. These hills are typical from the last ice age and you can find many interesting plants there, but also walk on the trails. It is a small part of the biggest Nature Reserve in the south part of Sweden, namely Verkeåns Nature Reserve.

We arrived just after some heavy rain. It made the air fresh, but the ground was of course wet. We found one of the characteristic flowers of the area and that is the Common Cowslip.

You can see the water drops on the flower. It adds an element to the picture that I like. I know that many macro photographers often spray water on the subject that they photograph. This is an easy way to add a little extra to the picture.

Photo Gallery: Walking in Stenshuvud National Park