nihalslivingthings

[nihalslivingthings]

Grass snake / Natrix Natrix

Fangirled over this one a lot. One of the many species we saw on a trip to a nearby pond. The way it moves on water looks amazing! It was at least 150 cm long. Photos look very different than each other because it was a low light environment and the snake moved fast!

[nihalslivingthings]

Bumble bee / Bombus terrestris

[nihalslivingthings]

Talking about cute pests, this is the cutest one. Felis catus.

She's a stray who decided to move into my yard. Follows me around and makes her own little comments by rolling on the ground making faces at me when I'm out taking photos.

She also likes to use my fruit trees as scratching posts and is not ashamed of it at all.

She's not.

[nihalslivingthings]

Anisoplia austriaca - Wiki says that it's a pest. Again. A new problem: having pretty pests?

[nihalslivingthings]

Common Darter / Sympetrum striolatum

[nihalslivingthings]

Bordered Orbweaver / Neoscona adianta

[nihalslivingthings]

Green bush cricket / Tettigonia

[nihalslivingthings]

Red bellied jumping spider / Philaeus chrysops

[nihalslivingthings]

Flower crab spider

[nihalslivingthings]

Pycnopogon

[nihalslivingthings]

Blue-tailed Damselfly / Ischnura elegans

[nihalslivingthings]

Variegated lady beetle (Hippodamia variegata) munching on some aphids

[nihalslivingthings]

Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) is the most widespread of all butterfly species. It's on every continent except Antarctica and South America. Probably the most interesting thing about this species is the fact that they can migrate all year round but don't do it regularly every year. Here is the banger; some evidence was found showing that these butterflies crossed the ocean!

They can also mate throughout the year.

[nihalslivingthings]

A red bellied jumping spider (Philaeus chrysops) peeking down a leaf

A rather personal note; as a person with severe arachnophobia, jumping spiders are by far the cutest and also hardest spiders to take a photo of! Runners don't usually jump like that and web weavers move in a predictable way. But these jumping dudes are smart, they can follow you around and maybe get too curious about the camera or you, which is easily accessible for them through a little jump. So instead of getting really close I shoot them from behind without them noticing, or stay really far away. In this instance the spider was focused on something out of the frame so I got to get closer.

Still, the only times I was comfortable enough to somehow bond with arachnids were the times I was shooting/spending time around jumping spiders. With web weavers I am just an observer of an artist, but jumping spiders want to interact with me for whatever reason and I find that adorable.

[nihalslivingthings]

Marmalade hoverfly (episyrphus balteatus)

[nihalslivingthings]

Jasmine moth (palpita vitrealis), a common and very pretty pest for the olive trees.

[nihalslivingthings]

Laudakia stellio daani or roughtail rock agama, or in my native language dikenli keler, native to the Aegean coastline. It has its own little creation myth. From wiki:

"Stellio is mentioned in Ovids Metamorphoses Book 5 line 461. A naughty boy mocks the goddess Ceres for drinking a drink containing honey and barley with too much greed, as she is quite thirsty. Angrily the goddess throws the drink in the face of the boy, and there by changes him into a Stellio or a starred agama. It is an etiological myth explaining how the starred agama got its spotted skin."