Today I drove about a hundred - hundred and twenty kilometers north of my hometown to take a walk in the mountains near the border with Slovenia.
The photographs in this post chronicle an hour of walking across & around one of the large, green meadows in that area. If you enlarge this opening picture by clicking on it, you may notice a flower. In the following shot ...
... I came closer to the aforementioned plant. At this point, I was ready to mount the macro lens ...
... and take a better more up-close look. With these two portraits taken from two different positions, it's time to reveal the identity of the plant. This is the Neotinea tridentata, commonly known as the three-toothed orchid.
Twenty - thirty meters further I found this mysterious little thing.
I mean, I found a bunch of them attached to the leaves of the clover.
It looks like an empty pupa. And it definitively is an empty pupa. Some insect has gone through the metamorphosis inside this thing. But what kind of insect? A moth? If you ask me, I'll say - yes, probably a moth. But I'm not so sure that you can believe me on this one.
After some more walking, I came across a group of beautiful blue flowers ...
... of the Linum narbonense plant.
As the gentle wind was blowing, the flowers were dancing in front of the lens of my camera.
For this photograph that shows the elegant, stylish interior of the flower, I mounted the macro lens again.
Here, I'm passing by one of the trees that were sparsely scattered like little islands in the sea of grass. It was a relatively small oak tree.
Not far from the aforementioned three, I stopped to photograph these bugs.
You can see a mating pair of Rhopalus subrufus bugs in these two photographs.
A bit further I came across this lovely flowerhead of the Globularia bisnagarica.
I was directed toward this conifer ...
... and soon I stopped again ...
... because I saw the beautiful, feather-like formations ...
... of the Stipa pennata grass.
These fluffy things looked like seeds ...
... but later at home, after consulting the Internet ...
... I found out that these "feathers" are actually the flowering parts of the plant.
Some very peculiar flowers we have here. 😀
While swaying in the wind ...
... this grass was a joy to watch.
A bit further I came across some spurge. I didn't photograph the plant without the insect on it, so I wasn't able to find out the exact species of this Euphorbia. The beetle in this photograph looked like a ladybird beetle ...
... but a better look revealed a leaf beetle from the genus Cryptocephalus of the Chrysomelidae family. I saw quite a few Cryptocephalus species with black dots on red elytra, a combination that immediately makes you think about a ladybird. But never before have I encountered one that has also the black and white, ladybird-like markings on its pronotum. Cryptocephalus octopunctatus is the name of the species. Although eight dots are mentioned in this beetle's scientific name, the number and shape of dots vary. Eight dots are far from being the rule, or even the most common combination. The one in these photographs has only two well-defined dots, and traces of something black in the area where the two elytra meet.
Judging by the photographs found on the Internet, I'll say that six dots are the most common variation.
A bit later I stopped to photograph another kind of plant.
The Narcissus elegans. Flowers were falling, and fruits started forming.
Even in this decaying stage, the flowers are lovely. Like little ghosts in the green grass.
When this bushcricket was photographed ...
... I was walking back to the car parked by the side of the narrow country lane. I don't know what species is this. The family is Tettigoniidae.
In this last series of shots, you can see the last insect that I photographed today.
The Agriotes obscurus. A click - beetle from the Elateridae family.
AND THAT'S IT. HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS WALK THROUGH THE GRASS. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.
