Tag Archives: insects

five random holidays notes

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LITTLELULU_Compo_1Mushrooms

  • Incredibly few mushrooms around. People that know something about them say that a prolific year is followed by a poor one: ever heard about that? Anyway you don’t get wrong if you trust the old popular knowledge. I think it is the first time I didn’t spotted even a single Amanita muscaria, but I’m happy to have eaten at least a few chanterelles.

LITTLELULU_Compo_2Snail

  • This must be the year of the snail: I saw lots of snails and shells in every place I visited. Apparently they’re not only in the mountains: they’ve been happily eating plants on a few family and friends balconies and I saw the cauliflowers of the urban vegetable gardens in Paris all eaten up :) Some snails expert between you that can bring some explanations?

LITTLELULU_Compo_3CowMilk

  • Curious to see as lactose-free cheeses and vegetal milks are now everywhere, even in places where milk is one of the most common traditional foods as in the mountain regions of Austria. Even gluten-free products and rice cakes are available in even the tiniest village supermarket.

LITTLELULU_Compo_4Ants

  • Ants are impossible to photograph! All the close-up pictures I attempted are blurred as they move too fast! Any tips? I also still wonder if they do sleep at night…

LITTLELULU_Compo_5Insects

  • It always amazes me to see how many things are going on at the same time on just a few inches of grass.

Padola / Danta

//images: Littlelulu

poppies under the rain

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Giverny

Rainy morning today in Paris… I took this pictures back in 2011 on a day just like this in Giverny, a place that can be described as a flowers paradise. If you’re curious about this village situated in the north of France (not far from Paris at all) be sure to follow up as next week I’ll be posting some more.

Have a nice weekend!

//images: Littlelulu

spiders and gentians

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Comelico Superiore

Ok, these spiders are not spiders…

Opiliones (from Wikipedia): …Although they belong to the class of arachnids, harvestmen are not spiders…

These arachnids are known for their exceptionally long walking legs, compared to body size, although there are also short-legged species. The difference between harvestmen and spiders is that in harvestmen the two main body sections (the abdomen with ten segments and cephalothorax, or prosoma and opisthosoma) are broadly joined, so that they appear to be one oval structure; they also have no venom or silk glands.

Harvestmen are very old arachnids. Fossils from the Devonian Rhynie chert, 410 million years ago, already show characteristics like tracheae and sexual organs, proving that the group has lived on land since that time.

gerridae

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Gerridae (from Wikipedia) is a family of true bugs in the order Hemiptera, commonly known as water striders, water bugs, magic bugs, pond skaters, skaters, skimmers, water scooters,water skaters, water skeeters, water skimmers, water skippers, water spiders, or Jesus bugs. One main characteristic that sets gerrids and other true bugs apart from other insects is that the front wing is only half functional. Rather than using it for flight, it acts as a membranous covering and the thickened part is by where claws develop. Consistent with the classification of Gerridae as true bugs, gerrids have a mouthpart evolved for piercing and sucking, Gerrids distinguish themselves by having the unique ability to walk on water. Gerridae, or water striders, are anatomically built to transfer their weight to be able to run on top of the water’s surface. As a result, one could likely find water striders present in any pond, river, or lake. Scientists have identified over 1,700 species of Gerrids, 10% of them being marine.