I spent some time in the meadow today. One of the meadows along the road between the towns of Zminj and Svetvinchenat.
It was early in the morning and the first thing I noticed was this small moth on the bindweed flower. In this opening photograph, the moth is resting on the petals ...
... but most of the time he (or she) was busy sucking the nectar from the center of the trumpet-like flower.
At one point a bee landed on the pistil and stamens, so the moth withdrew to the edge of the petals.
When it comes to the names of the species, I wasn't able to identify this small bee ...
... but the moth is the Xystophora pulveratella ...
... and the flower belongs to the Convolvulus arvensis plant.
I took one more shot, and then ...
... I walked to the dense vegetation on the edge of the meadow. These small fruits of the Euonymus europaeus shrub were photographed there.
On that same plant, I found this lovely green caterpillar.
This is the larva of the Ligdia adustata, a moth from the Geometridae family. These larvae feed on Euonymus europaeus and some other related plants from the Celastraceae family.
Back in the central part of the meadow, I saw that some Convolvulus arvensis flowers have holes in their petals. Very soon, I found out who makes them.
This is the very young, wingless nymph of the Phaneroptera nana bushcricket.
This lovely flower of the Silene latifolia was photographed a couple of meters further.
Here you can take a better, more up-close look at the yellow anthers.
On the Trifolium pratense plant, I photographed a butterfly.
The small Aricia agestis from the Lycaenidae family.
On one of the nearby plants, I photographed this small fuzzy fly with a long proboscis. Can't tell you the name of the species, but the genus is definitively Geron, and the family is Bombyliidae.
This robber fly was photographed on the small oak tree surrounded by shrubs, at the edge of the meadow. The family is Asilidae, but with quite a few almost identical-looking species present in the area, I can't tell you which one exactly is this.
The predatory fly has just caught a small insect. It looks like some kind of aphid.
On one of the nearby shrubs ...
... I found an interesting planthopper.
The Dictyophara europaea, commonly known as the European lantern fly.
Before returning home, I walked one more time to the center of the meadow ...
... and there, I photographed one more Xystophora pulveratella moth.
I spent a couple of hours walking and sniffing around. It was a nice morning and a fairly good macro-safari.
On the way back home, while passing through the town of Vodnjan, I had the opportunity to photograph the train and make a GIF out of those consecutive shots.
The following links will take you to the sites with more information about some of the protagonists of this post. I found some stuff about them there.
https://www.leps.it/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyophara_europaea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligdia_adustata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolvulus_arvensis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaneroptera_nana
https://leptiri.hr/
AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK - THE END.
