romunov’s blog et al

I took the oportunity and went for a photographing spree around the local meadows and woods. A bunch of pictures under the fold. It’s 11 p.m. and I still have some work to do, so I’ll be attaching names at a later date. I know most of them, but I need to identify a few of them.

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I’ve been absent for a few days last week (ok, for ten days). I was attending a camp in Vransko (between Celje and Ljubljana). It’s a student camp (more here, comprised mostly of biology students, but you will find other pimps in there as well. Work there involved a lot of field work, and for some groups, even field lab work (with dissection microscopes and such, especially for spider and botany groups, but also dragonflies). I was in a group that studied butterflies. We searched for suitable habitats for butterflies, but due to late season the flowers weren’t in bloom and the grass has been cut on a lot of pastures, the catch wasn’t what we hoped for. None the less, our repertoire represented 72 different species on 32 different localities. Our highest locality was on mountain and ski resort Golte (1500 something meters). Here is only a small part of pictures I took.

A butt load of pictures under the fold.
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Had a little field trip to Goricko national park. Some places are really neat, although some habitats are in danger of being taken over by invasive species like Solidago and Impatiens grandulifera. We found three species of Maculinea (Large Blues), which was our primary goal. We found 50 species in total. We visited about 5 locations. More pictures under the fold.

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Ha, finally solved the mystery that surrounded this dragonfly for the past few days. I’ve netted it a few days ago but didn’t have my book nor my camera with me to identify it. So I tried to remember as many characters as possible so I could later look it up, and failed miserably. I could only pinpoint the genus by memory.

I’ve finally managed to net it and photograph it, so here it is. Somatochlora meridionalis from the family of Cordulegastridae.

And how do you know the species from the rest? All other characters aside, the yellow spot on the thorax is pretty characteristic of this one.

Some of you might be familiar with bioblitz - an event where you go out and try to identify and write down as many plant and animal species as possible. At <a href="http://rigorvitae.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-necroblitz.html">Rigor Vitae</a>, this was taken a step forward, where roadkills are identified and recorded. Somewhat easier, as you don’t have to search around, just watch where you drive your bike.

Perhaps I can someday publish some of the roadkill photos I have from my daily trips to school. 

Been a bit busy with the camera. I’ve tucked pictures under the fold to haste page load.

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We visited some nice karst meadows a few days ago. My camera isn’t currently available, so I’m posting pics from an anonymous photographer. With her consent, of course. Sorry, no butterfly pictures.

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This is what I found today “around” my home:
Ochlodes venatus
Limenitis reducta
Limenitis camilla
Pieris rapae
Pieris napi
Leptidea sinapis/reali
Melanargia galathea
Maniola jurtina
Argynnis adippe
Argynnis paphia
Clossiana dia
Lycaena phlaeas (mating pair)
Kanetisa circe (first personal sighting around here)
Iphiclides podalirius (first personal sighting around here)
Pieris brassicae
Brenthis daphne
Satyrium pruni Didn’t catch it, so the ID may be dubious. Damn! By phenology (time of occurance) it COULD be S. pruni, as it’s a bit late for a similar species, S. spini.
Polygonum c-album
Neptis rivularis
Aphantopus hyperantus
Gonepteryx rhamni
Mellicta athalia (aurelia?!) I have to recheck these two.
Araschnia levana
Brenthis ino
Pergarge aegeria
Coenonympha arcania Interesting enough, no C. pamphilus this time.
Melitaea diamina
Polyommatus icarus

We spent four days in Piran at the Marine biology station counting plankton and benthos.

We used a plankton (250 micron) net to haul on-board five loads of plankton, collected some rocks and identified whatever we could, and finally, we dredged shell bottom and soft bottom. Former was way richer in macrozoofauna. I don’t feel like going through the species we encountered, but I estimate, all in all, to about 200.

We spent a lot of time counting plankton. A lot. Based on our findings I estimated that in northern Adriatic sea, about 20x50 km and 20 m deep, lives about 10¹⁴ phyllopod crustaceans (sea water flees) (Penilia avirostris). Other common animals were Acartia clausii (a copepod), Doliolum muelleri (thaliacean tunicate - a salp), Oikopleura dioica (apendicularid tunicate) and some others.
We found that our samples differed to some degree, indicating that you can’t sample the same fauna in two hauls with the net we used, probably due to water currents.

I occasionally took the opportunity to go snorkeling, but that was limited to late hours of the day. We worked from 9 am to 10 pm on day one, 11 pm on day two and midnight (fun and joy of statistics) on the third day. You can imagine there was little time and sometimes energy, to do all the things one has set out to do. Unfortunately no one wanted to go diving with me, even though we could get all the equipment.
Also, my snorkle was having fun with me, letting in water, which made the experience… less pleasant, and let’s leave it at that.

On day 4 we visited the mariculture I’ve been familar with to some degree. I was there in previous years with the station when they studied the effect of mariculture “ponds” on sediment underneath it. It’s amazing to see the way fish (Dicentrarchus labrax) feed - swimming in circle and creating a number of eddies on the water surface. The power of 20k fish!

I’ve been a naughty boy… again. I should have studied, but I really had to take advantage of the beautiful sunny weather. Went butterfly and dragonfly hunting, and then some more. 9 pics inside.

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We had a field trip with our butterfly society to Mlake near Ajdovscina. Some pics inside. I excluded butterfly pics and am posting the most “interesting” ones.

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I did my butterfly route, and along the way, made a few photos. More under the fold.

And here is the list of species I saw/heard today. LBB (little brown birds) and other common things, excluded.
Coenonympha pamphilus
Pieris napi
Pieris rapae
Leptidea sinapis/reali
Gonepteryx rhamni
Callophrys rubi
Glaucopsyche alexis
Papilio machaon
Coenagrion hastulatum (dragonfly - need to recheck since I’m still a novice)
Orthetrum cancellatum (dragofly - need to recheck since I’m still a novice)
Araschnia levana
Everes argiades
Issoria lathonia
Cuculus canorus
Pyrgus malvae/malvoides
Lycaena tityrus
Anthocharis cardamines
Erynnis tages
Listera ovata

and more. ^_^

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I got a dichotomous orchids of Slovenia key from my docent for botany. I managed to ID one of the orchids growing on the hill next door.
I think I’m correct when I say that this is pictured specimen of Dactylorhizon (prstasta kukavica). I can’t decide on the species, though.

I’m thinking either D. maculata agg. or D. comosa.

According to the key, characters favouring D. maculata agg.:
- upper stem leaves don’t reach lower flowers (socvetje?)
- stem under the flowers thick 1,5-3 mm
- outter side flower leaves in blunt angle

Characters favouring D. comosa:
- stem hollow (I think it’s hollow, it sure feels like it, but I didn’t open it to be sure)
- flowers from May to June

I will leave the possibility that this is a hybrid, but if I had to decide the species, I would say D. comosa.

I’ve been busy outside again, and here are some of common finds around here. I’ve tucked everything under the fold to hasten main page load.

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“Junior section” of butterfly society went butterfly hunting. Our objectives were to find Zerynthia polyxena and record local sightings of all other butterflies. Lots of pics and info inside!

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What is suppose to be a 20 minutes trip home, took me three hours this time. I stoppped by some walls and meadows to check on butterflies and lizards.

Catch #1: Everes argiades, a pretty common little tiny butterfly with little “tail” on hind wings.

Catch #2: Podarcis muralis - Common wall lizard. I observed three animals and slightly interrupted their daily routine when I tried to get a close up of one of little fellas. These animals are highly variable. Compare this one to one I photographed about one week ago some distance away.

This is one from the three. Notice the nicked tail. It’s commonly known that lizards will drop tails to avoid being eaten. A strategy that often works quite well, especially when you’re caught in the open.

A bit less known is the scientific term of this action - autotomy.

I also saw Alcedo atthis - King fisher. A bird known for its fishing skills. I basically only saw a blue dot propelling slightly above the water, but there aren’t many blue birds around here.

We went bird watching in salterns Secovlje. Salterns border with Croatia. Paper trail of salterns dates back to 14th century. Salt production has been more or less abandoned, but the salterns serve an important refuge to rare(r) species of plants and animals. They also run a museum. It’s all on their page, also in English.

I took some landscape shots. You can see some remnants of salt pools that were used to extract salt from water. These salt pools are connected with gutters that supplied fresh sea water. Some are being overgrown, other are still quite deep with water, exhibiting a wide range of life, plants, algae and animals alike.

A lot of pics under the fold.

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It struck me that I haven’t posted this interesting flower I found near my house (a while back - 12.9.2006). I present Astrantia major from family called Apiaceae.

Yesterday, we visited accumulation lake Zbilje formed from river Sava. In winter months, birds tend to congregate in water bodies that remail more or less unfrozen (sometimes a bird gets stuck in the ice too) where they can find sufficient food. As you can see on the first photo, there’s plenty of food to go around. Someone started throwing old bread from the restaurant (building on the right). Birds started flocking to the feeding site in seconds!

Black “ducks” (not true ducks) are Fulica atra.

All in all, we saw 17 species. Here’s a list:
Tachybaptus ruficollis
Podiceps cristatus
Phalacrocorax carbo
Ardea cinerea
Cygnus olor
Anser anser
Anas platyrhynchos
Aythya ferina
Aythya fuligula
Mergus merganser
Buteo buteo
Fulica atra
Parus major
Garrulus glandarius
Pica pica
Corvus corone cornix
Passer sp. (either P. domesticus or P. montanus)

Here’s a pic of Anser anser and Anas platyrhynchos.

A silhouette of Phalacrocorax carbo.

This little fella (Podiceps cristatus) was stuck in a puddle, a small body of water that was left behind after someone drained the lake. The lake is used as a fishery. You can see what can be left behind on the last picture.

A mantid ootheca (egg sac), probably from Mantis religiosa. Too bad I didn’t take good picture of the ootheca my mantid layed a few years ago (muteman who commented on this page got the babies).

This is what was left over when they drained the pond. I don’t know why they net out the fish in autumn. The pipe was probably several 10 meters long. I don’t know how far the bodies went. Some fishes were still alive, flipping about from time to time and moving their operculum. Sad, really.