- June 1st
Back to diary index
|
The advantage of being a bit behing with my diary-work is that I can write a single entry about more days. Or show photographs from
different days so they can be easily compared. Like the ones below of the dead shrew. We came across it during a walk in 'Dal Palland', a small 'valley'
only several minutes away from our home by foot. The dead shrew was laying on the trial and after photographing it I placed it in the grass just beside the
trail. Only six days later I took the second picture! I also photographed a living shrew that day, but I'll write about that in a seperate entry as I saw and
photographed a bit more even.
|
|
On my way from work to house I stopped at the 'Besiendershuis' at the boulevard of the river Waal in Nijmegen to watch Swifts. It was
very windy, which enabled me to take some reasonable pictures. I'll show one of the the best one of course) below, the rest can be found in the
Misc. Swift pictures section. After I got home I was able to photograph an insect I'd seen before in our back garden. I thought maybe it was the bee fly Bombilius ater, but as that's rare in the Netherlands, so not very likely to see so often in our garden. I searched around a bit and found it was another bee fly with the somewhat strange name Anthrax anthrax. It parasitizes on solitary bees, especially on mason bees... 
 |
|
As I walked into the garden I noticed a small bee on the small Flax (Linum usitatissimum, Vlas in Dutch). As I took a closer look
I noticed it had very beautiful eyes, take a look at the picture below! After the dead shrew in Dal Palland it was nice to catch a couple of glimpses of the shrew in our back garden again. Always hard to photograph, fast and secretive as they are. That's why there some effort needed to spot the shrew in the picture below. They seem to always be hunting for insects, day or night... Later I noticed a small bee walking through the grass. It didn't look very happy, so I picked it up and placed it onto a flower-'head' of the Wild Mustard (Sinapis arvensis, Herik in Dutch). It immediatly started drinking nectar from several flowers. After a while it tried to fly off, but it fell to the ground. I picked it up again and placed it on another flower-'head'. I placed it on another after it visited all flowers and continued doing so for a while as the bee seemed to remain a bit slow. I must admit I gave up on it after a while though. It kept falling off the flowers and the continuous drinking of nectar didn't seem to help. :( 
 |
| I went on excursion to the Eifel area in Germany with the KNNV Nijmegen this weekend. It was a wonderful experience. Such a gorgeous
area. I saw loads of things I'd never seen before, enjoyed the beautiful weather and the immense richness of this area's nature. I wrote an excursion report
for the website of the KNNV Nijmegen which can be found here. It's in Dutch though... I'm not going to spend time on translating the report when I'm so far behind on my diary, so you'll have to make do with the huge amount of pictures below. As usual, hold the mouse cursor on the thumbnail of the picture to see what's on it. Not as usual, the descriptions are rather short, just the name and date. 
 
 
 
 
 |
|
Compare the first picture to that in the entry of May 31st: at least 30 cm's of growth! Though I don't have a comparitive picture for it,
the Black Mustard (Brassica nigra, Zwarte Mosterd in Dutch) is growing even faster (the that comparison isn't completely fair though as the Spear
Thistle is nearly at it's full height while the mustard is still in it's main growth-spurt. One that can be compared is the Wood Ragwort. Take a look at the
picture in the entry of May 17th! Nearly doulbed it's height and making extra branches for the flowers. :)
 |
|
Last year the Brown Knapweed (Centaurea jacea, Knoopkruid in Dutch) grew into a huge plant (nearly two meters high is pretty big
for Brown Knapweed...) but never properly flowered. This year we have a couple more plants of this species and they are starting to flower! Good news for
the insects and for us as they're very beautiful! :) |
|
A very typical insect visited our Spear Thistle (Cirsium vulgare, Speerdistel in DUtch) today: A Golden-bloomed Grey Longhorn
(Agapanthia villosoviridescens (pff, quite a mouthful!), Distelboktor in Dutch). I'm not sure what the black things just below the beetle are, eggs or
faeces. |