I climbed Gran Paradiso in Italy to photograph the Ibex

Recently I said a temporary farewell to my squirrels. I went to Italy and Switzerland and my journey began in Grand Paladiso National Park in northern Italy. Nestled in this valley is this little town that is popular with cross-country skiers. I was heading up the mountain when I quickly noticed one of my target species, the ibex. He had some pretty impressive horns but there was another species I wanted to photograph, the chamois. Once I'd spotted one my eyes became trained and I was able to spot more in the landscape. I'm honestly amazed at how relaxed the wildlife is. The ibex has just woken up and he's feeding right next to us and he is so calm. We can move around him and he just doesn't seem to care. I thought we'd have to keep our distance and we wouldn't be that close and I'd have to use my maximum focal length but I've mostly been shooting at 300mm and the ibex especially, he doesn't care. I can walk around him. I think it's time for the last few shots and then it's time for pizza. The sun had dipped behind the mountain and it started to become much cooler and I noticed the chamois were starting to come down the mountain. The ibex suffer from an eye infection but fortunately his other eye was healthy. We stayed in this cute little hotel and the night before it pretty much snowed the entire night. It snowed a lot. We've come to this town in the mountains to look at some woodcraft shops but we've arrived at midday and apparently all the shops close in the day so I think we're just going to get some coffee. I want to quickly thank the sponsor of this video, Squarespace. My target for this year is to make a blog post every time I take some good photos and this means I've created a post with all my photos from Italy. I've also included some photos that don't appear in the video. There are different ways you can display your photos. You can have a carousel or a grid and I've gone for a slideshow so if you'd like to have a better look at my photos, have a look at my blog and of course if you want to give Squarespace a go, head to squarespace.com slash dannyconnorwild and you can save 10% off a new purchase of a website or domain. We woke up to this beautiful flurry of snow. Every photographer's dream is a mix of conditions and I think nothing beats fresh snow. Today we're with Luca, an Italian naturalist and wildlife photographer and we're going to try and find some wildlife to photograph. We've already seen a few of the Chamois. We're still not quite sure how to say it but in Italian it's Camorcio, I think. Okay, let's go. We were so lucky to meet this little Chamois. His horns were just starting to show. After several hours of steady hiking, we reached a clearing at the top. Luca has just spotted a golden eagle. We also have a bearded vulture flying around so hopefully they both return. We lost sight of the bird of prey and then we were really surprised to see some crossbills. They're called crossbills because their bills are literally crossed. We started to head down the mountain because that night we were driving to Switzerland. We've just found this amazing waterfall on the side of the road and yeah, it's stunning.