The Grass snake Natrix helvetica is the UK’s largest snake and is most often found in wetlands, though it also occurs along hedgerows and woodland edges near water. It feeds mainly on amphibians and fish, but will also take small mammals and birds. An excellent swimmer, the grass snake is often seen gliding through ponds or basking among vegetation at the water’s edge. Females lay between 10 and 40 eggs in warm, rotting vegetation such as compost heaps, where the eggs develop until hatching in early autumn. Like all reptiles, grass snakes hibernate during the colder months, usually from October to April.
Danny Green is a multiple award-winning wildlife photographer, based in the UK. He has been photographing the natural world for over 25 years and has always been a dedicated Canon shooter, mainly working with film in the early years and later fully embracing digital technology. His approach to photographing nature is a long process and he can sometimes spend months, if not years, working on subjects and projects.
He has won many prizes in some of the most respected wildlife photography competitions around the world. His work is represented by some of the leading natural history picture agencies and his images are published on a regular basis around the world.
For the past seven years Danny has been working on a project to document the Arctic and Subarctic regions of northern Europe. This body of photographic work formed the backbone of his new book ‘The Long Journey North’, released in 2014.
Danny had his first National Geographic feature published – on the Atlantic puffin – in the June 2014 issue and it was a very proud moment for him. The project spanned over five years and Danny visited some of the most beautiful colonies in the UK, Iceland and Norway in search of images of the iconic bird. He recalls: "It was one of the hardest projects I have undertaken as the demands and standards are so high when shooting for National Geographic."
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