EARLY AUTUMN OF 2007 (...the sea, the meadows, the plants, the animals...and even a few fragments of a pitoresque old town...)
It's early autumn right now. After a dry summer, nature here in my area has been revitalized by abundant rain, but I don't have enough time for outdoor activities, so I can't show you that nice October atmosphere. What I can and will do, however, is take some old photographs from another early autumn and write a post that can bring me back to October 2007, when I took a bunch of shots with my first DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 350D.
The place shown in this opening photograph is very close to the sea. You can't see the sea, but believe me, it is very close; you would certainly be able to smell it if you were there.
That area called Marlera, situated about five or six kilometers from where I live, appeared in many of my posts. The village of Liznjan is only a kilometer or two from there.
This is the common mallow(Malva sylvestris). I mean, it's only its flower; you can't see the entire plant. Its leaves and flowers are edible and can be used in herbal teas. It is especially effective against the dry, irritating cough.
This meadow was photographed four or five kilometers north of Marlera, in the coastal area closer to the village of Shishan.
Some of the yellow flowers scattered across the picture belong to the highly poisonous Euphorbia nicaeensis plant. In the following photograph...
...you can take a better, more up-close look at those flowers.
At some point, while I was photographing the flowers, this interesting beetle landed nearby.
The scientific name of the species is Oryctes nasicornis. The common name is the European rhinoceros beetle. This is the male. Only males have the horn. Back then, in 2007, I didn't have a macro lens, only the wide-angle kit lens that came with the camera. This beetle was fortunately big enough for my lens.
The larvae of the European rhinoceros beetle feed on rotten wood. The meadow in this coastal area is just a narrow belt between the large, dense forest and the sea.
The rhinoceros beetle is a forest inhabitant that landed on the meadow to rest before continuing its mission, whatever that was. I mean, it must have been something related to mating. That's the only thing the adult beetles do. They don't feed at all. The fat reserves accumulated during the long larval stage keep them going for two to six months of their lifespan. The larval stage is much longer, two to four years.
In this photograph, the litlle rhino is resting on the branch of one of the small trees at the edge of the forest.
Here you can see a bigger chunk of the coastal meadow and more of the scenery. There is a dog, partially hidden behind the shrub in the center of the picture. His name is Pancho.
You can see some flat coastal rocks in this photograph.
The name of the white dog in the lower-left part of the picture is Pepi.
Not all rocks in that stretch of coastline are flat.
The yellow flowers that dominate the foreground of this wide, scenic shot belong to the plant commonly known as immortelle.
Here you can take a better, more up-close look at those tiny flowers.
The scientific name of the species is Helichrysum italicum. It's a plant with a strong, pleasant scent, and it has quite a few medicinal properties. And now...
...something completely different. Rovinj. That's the name of the town shown in this photograph. It's a very beautiful historic town by the sea, about fifty kilometers northwest of where I live.
This shot shows one of the interesting old buildings in the neiberhood close to the center of Rovinj.
Here you can see some colorful autumn leaves that will soon end up on the ground under the tree. The photograph was taken in the hills of the central northern part of Istria. The real autumn starts a bit earlier there.
This showy litlle mushroom was also photographed there.
This is the Sarcoscypha coccinea, commonly known as the scarlet elf cup.
You can see a much bigger mushroom in this black-and-white shot. Can't tell you what species exactly this is, but it is some kind of Russula, that's for sure.
This is a photograph from Marlera, the coastal area at the start of the post. The bee, feeding on the blackberry flower, is a bit messy and blurred becouse the lens I was using isn't that good for photographing insects, at least twice smaller than the rhinoceros beetle.
This photograph from the same area shows a dry plant surrounded by greenery.
Here you can see the clouds and the moon above the scenery there in Marlera.
The scientific name of this weevil is Otiorhynchus cardiniger.
Here you can see a bit of low herbaceous vegetation near a pudlle left by the recent rain.
This monochrome shot shows another chunk of scenery in that area.
I caught this shiny beetle on one of the unpaved roads that lead through the fields and meadows of Marlera. The scientific name of the species is Lytta vesicatoria. It belongs to the Meloidae family.
This is one of the small cats that were running around my yard in those days.
His name is Gigi.
This unpaved road runs along the coastline in the area near the village of Shishan.
Here you can take a look at the sea in that area.
This black and white shot shows the grass and wild onion on them meadow near the sea.
Here you can see the fishermen early in the morning.
The same coastal scenery looms more dramatically under the cloudy sky just before the rain.
And that's it. The post ends here. As always on Hive, the photographs are my work.