18 May 2013
| European Butterflies and Moths |
 | I would like to welcome you all to my website, which is a kind of visiting card of my interests... Although I'm not a professional entomologist, I have long been interested in the Lepidoptera and everything to do with them. I graduated from the Szczecin University of Technology as an electrical engineer; at present I work in IT. Butterflies and moths have been my greatest passion – they help me to escape from the everyday routine, even if only for a moment. I have been photographing them for just a few years – I bought my first digital camera, a Minolta Dimage 7i, back in 2004. This was followed by a Minolta Dimage A2, and now I use a Canon EOS 400D. For macrophotography I use a fixed focal length Canon EF 100mm F2.8 L IS USM Macro lens. I take my camera with me at all times – after all, you never know what might turn up in the field. Sometimes I'm lucky – you have to be in the right place at the right time. That's why I spend most of my free time in the field with a rucksack and camera. I take home and breed most of the caterpillars I find in the wild, and I record their development photographically. Almost all the photos I take of butterflies and moths are in their natural environment. I'm not a professional photographer, neither are my pictures artistic – they just reflect the way I see insects. Unfortunately, Warsaw, where I currently live, like all large cities, is not a good place for butterflies. So I seek inspiration beyond the city's boundaries, especially in landscape parks or nature reserves. From time to time I go on longer expeditions to the south of Poland or abroad. |
| In 2002 I began to think how I could collect all the available information about European butterflies and moths and publish them on one website. I was inspired by Paolo Mazzei from Italy who created a database for the website Moths and Butterflies of Europe and North Africa. In April 2003 I started to develop my own MS Access database. At the beginning it was really quite a simple tool, but two years later, I started to rewrite the database to support PHP language. I started the first official version of this website in December 2004. That covered only Polish butterflies and moths. But a few months later I increased the number of species to include some Central European ones. At the beginning of 2006 I decided to add all the currently known European species. It was not easy to obtain all this information – different countries use different nomenclatures. So I had to decide which one to select – I chose Fauna Europaea. All the species that are in this database are named in accordance with this standard. I have been a member of the Polish Entomological Society (PTE) for many years. In 2010 I was honoured to receive the Society's Gold Award for my contribution to its development and for popularizing lepidopterology ;-) I would like my website to serve a large number of people interested in butterflies and moths both as a hobby and professionally. Even though the website is now very user-friendly, I still have a good number of ideas and surprises up my sleeve ;-) | |
| If you want to get in touch with me, please use: | |
 Skype | |
 Email | |
 Facebook | |
I speak Polish and English. My German and Russian are not so good, but I can get by ;-) I hope you will find this website useful and easy to use. Thank you for your Guest Book entries. | |
