EVENING ON THE MEADOW BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

Yesterday, I drove a couple of kilometers to the village of Liznjan, bought a few things in a small grocery store there, and then continued towards another village, the one called Shishan. After passing through that village without stopping, I reached one of the meadows a few kilometers further and parked the car by the side of the road. At that point, I must have been about seven or eight kilometers from home. The late afternoon was turning into evening pretty fast, so I had only a couple of hours to ramble around and explore the amazing things hidden in the tall grass.

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As always at this time of the year, I found more than I expected, so you can expect quite a few nice and colorful things from this post, especially if you like small invertebrates like spiders and insects.

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This is Plebejus argus, commonly known as the silver-studded blue, a small butterfly from the Lycaenidae family. Many diurnal species are easy to photograph in the evening when they get ready to spend the night calmly resting on the stems or ears of the grass.

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Shedding of the old exoskeleton is another thing easily seen and photographed in the evening. I mean, it can happen early in the morning or in the middle of a cloudy day, but from what I saw, there is a much bigger chance to come across it at the end of a spring or summer day. This Tettigonia viridissima nymph ...

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... is already out of its old skin and is busy devouring it. The exoskeleton has enough nutrients to be worth chewing and recycling.

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I observed the young bush cricket for only a couple of minutes.

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After this photograph, I continued my walk through the grass.

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These days, the crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) is in bloom. The flowers add plenty of red and pink to the intense green of the meadow, making the ordinary roadside place look pretty and memorable.

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In this tryptich of shots taken through the macro lens, you can take a better, more up-close look at those small flowers.

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This is just an ordinary portrait of an ordinary crimson clover flower head. It took me a bit to find a flower head isolated enough from the others of its kind to make this shot possible. I found it on the edge of the meadow, near the line of shrubs and small trees that look like a thick green wall now in spring.

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A bit later, while photographing another flower head, I noticed a tiny green dot on its top, so I mounted the macro lens to see what that was.

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It looks like an aphid, don't you think?

Yep, a tiny aphid in one of those pinky flowers. The scientific name of the species is Acyrthosiphon pisum.
The flowers shown in the following photograph are very small, more or less the size of the aphid you just saw.

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These are the Valeriana locusta flowers.

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I came a bit closer with the macro lens in this shot. Valeriana locusta, commonly known as the cornsalad or lamb's lettuce, is a tasty edible plant with small but tasty leaves that can make a great salad.

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Here you can see a beautiful iridescent fly resting on the ear of grass. The scientific name of the species is Chloromyia formosa. It belongs to the Stratiomyidae family. The adult flies feed on nectar and pollen, while the larvae live in the soil where they feed on the decaying plant material.
The iridescence doesn't look good in harsh light, so I couldn't use the small, unsofisticated, built-in flash of my camera in the low-light conditions. Therefore, getting the above photograph was a relatively long and frustrating process. The fly was very calm and patient, fortunately.

A bit later, and about five or six meters further, as the light was getting even lower, I came across another shiny insect that had to be photographed in ambient light.

This is the Smaragdina salicina, a beetle from the Chrysomelidae family.

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Here you can see a big bunch of recently hatched Araneus diadematus spiderlings.

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They will live together until they grow up a bit.

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Araneus diadematus is an orb-weaving species from the Araneidae family.

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Neoscona adianta spiderlings are still considerably smaller than adults, but they are much bigger than Araneus diadematus you just saw in the previous three photographs, and they live a solitary life.

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Each young spider builds its web.

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This one has caught a prey, some bug from the Miridae family. The following photograph ...

... was taken a minute earlier when the spider started enveloping the prey in the silk. The upper side of the bug is visible here, so I can confidently say that the scientific name of the species is Closterotomus annulus.

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While photographing the Neoscona adianta from under the web, with the sky as backdrop, I had enough light to get a sharp picture in natural light if the spider isn't moving.

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Through a combination of flash and ambient light, I ended up photographing all I needed to get the visuals for the story.

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Neoscona adianta belongs to the Araneidae family and is probably the most common species from that family here in my area. It appeared in almost every post I published this spring, so far.

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Sometimes, when resting in the grass, the young Neoscona adianta spiders build small tent-like structures very different from the orbs for hunting. Here you can see a spider in one of those little shelters.

And that's it. I mean, the post isn't over as it usually is when those "nd that's it" words show up. That's it, only when it comes to Neoscona adianta. The following picture ...

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... is here to allow you a break from the spiders and the macro view in general. It is a wide shot that shows the colors of the meadow. On one of the clover flower heads in the foreground ...

... I found a very small fly I had never seen before. The light was very low, but since the insect was iridescent, I had to find a way to get a shot in ambient light. Fortunately, the clover isn't tall, so I could lean the camera on my knee and add a bit more stability for the relatively long exposure. A few minutes later ...

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... I noticed another fly of the same kind. This one was resting on the leaf of grass, a couple of meters further.
Today, after a relatively short search on the Internet, I found out that the scientific name of the species is Ortochile nigrocoerulea. It belongs to the Dolichopodidae (long-legged flies) family.
Most adults Dolichopodidae are predators, scavengers, or cleptoparasites, so I thought at first that this one was too, especially considering the elongated mouthparts that look like something made for piercing or stabbing like a dagger.
I was surprised to learn that Ortochile nigrocoerulea is associated with flowers and has been seen feeding on nectar and pollen.
However, it seems that there isn't much known about this species, or the knowledge isn't prominent on the Internet.

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In these two shots, the fly is using the brush-like structures on its forelegs to clean its dagger-like mouth.

This relatively big beetle is another species I don't remember seeing before.

Its scientific name is Sparedrus testaceus. It belongs to the Oedemeridae family. The Oedemeridae I'm familiar with here in my area are all much smaller, so despite the shape of Sparedrus testaceus being fairly similar to those other species, I would have never guessed the family without the Internet.
With two encounters with local species unknown to me, this was a hell of an evening. It was a very exciting walk through the grass.

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At some point on my evening walk ...

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... I came across this dramatic scene.

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A spider in the fangs of a spider.

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Both spiders were approximately the same size ...

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... and of the same species.

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Cannibalism isn't rare among spiders, especially the sexual one related to mating, which ends with the male being eaten.
When it comes to Pisaura mirabilis, the species from the Pisauridae family shown in these photographs, cannibalism quite often occurs in all kinds of circumstances.

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In this specific case, a female has killed a male. Pisaura mirabilis is a very common spider here in my area, but an opportunity to photograph a scene like this doesn't arise that often.

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... you can see a spider I encounter very rarely. I saw it only a few times so far.

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It belongs to the Theridiidae family. The name of the species is Enoplognatha afrodite.

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Many Tettigonia viridissima nymphs were jumping all around the meadow. They are very numerous these days. In this and the following shot ...

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... you can see two of them sharing the same ear of grass.

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This is the Emmelina monodactyla ...

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... a moth from the Pterophoridae family. Like many other moths, it becomes active at dusk.

As the moths start their active hours, diurnal insects go to rest. Here you can see a bee fly on the plant where it will probably spend the whole night. The scientific name of this furry species from the Bombyliidae family is Bombylius minor.

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The last photograph of today's post shows the Bruchidius pusillus, a tiny beetle from the Bruchidae (seed beetles) family, sleeping on the ear of grass. Hope you enjoyed the journey - good night.

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