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 >>/6500/
That's quite a big plant and must have germinated a while ago!
Why do you have so many rotten strawberries? A shame to throw them away. Do you grow them or did you buy them?
 >>/6506/
wait what you bought them rotten? dont they come in clear plastic trays in the us so you can check for rotten ones?

i harvested a bunch of fly agaric and dried them. dunno if i have the balls to eat them though
 >>/6515/
It's like when you buy a car and the moment you drive off the lot it's worth much less, well perfectly good looking strawberries become rotten on the ride home.
 >>/6517/
Must be a California thing. I noticed great differences in mold susceptibility. Just like in taste. Some strawberries taste great, others like nothing. Some rot quickly, some last forever and just dry up.But generally they last at least a couple of days. But my apartment is relatively cool.

 >>/6515/
Starz with very small doses and see what happens. And only if you don't have to drive or do anything socially acceptable for 1-2 days. People react very differently to fly agaric.
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 >>/6275/
I saw the owl again yesterday!
Same time a dusk. It circled centimeters ablove ground in the garden and then grabbed something. Probably a mouse, there are a lot now. Good thing Cats weren't around. They would have gotten the owl too.
Again it was absolutely silent in flight and only made a rustling noise when it grabbend the prey in the grass during flight. Didn't land. Amazing!
Wheelbarrow wheel finally broke, bought a new one. I hope host can install it. Removing the old one was an ordeal as one screw would not come loose and rotated within the axle.
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It's the most beautiful time of the year, everything is in bloom and the trees are beginning to unfold their leaves. Went hiking and saw some cool birds!
Two Black Woodpeckers and a Hoopoe, also heard a Cuckoo. No chance of taking pics of any of them.

Surprisingly no wild boars though, only a hare. Also too fast for a photo.

Plant-wise there was a lot of Colchicum autumnale, enough to poison half Germany. Only the leaves though that people sometimes mistake for wild garlic and die, it flowers in autumn.

European biodiversity is low but in exchange, some species come in great abundance. The rare purple Hepatica nobilis, the white Anemone nemorosa and the yellow Anemone ranunculoides. If you find them, you find a lot, they literally cover the forest floor in dense mats.
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The tall Primula veris found on meadows and the short Primula vulgaris also encountered deeper in the forest. Lots of violets from pure white to deep purple. Most don't have a scent. The only animal we managed to capture was a huge female European oil beetle on a road. They produce the poison and burn agent cantharidin.
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These hawks have a lot to eat around here but their favorite meal is black birds so there aren't many around. They then go after finches, gophers, rats, mice, and they constantly fight crows so there aren't any crows here for long.
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 >>/7122/
> 20240827
Yeah, I already thought I had seen this one before. Dunno which species that is. Identifying birds is tiresome.
Glad they're not here though, we have lots of blackbirds and crows and they all get along.
I heard another hoopoe, they make a weird 90s phone ringtone sound. Went out to look for it but couldn't find the hoopoe. Too bad, they look cool.
Heard severals cuckoos as well but you almost never see them. Very elusive bird.

 >>/7123/
Is the first one a dahlia? We never had luck with those and I don't really like them.

Second is California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)

Third is some Clematis hybrid.

All of those would flower months later here.

Is your grape actually dormant in winter? Ours are at roughly the same stage now with inflorescences visible. I'd thought in California they're evergreen.

It's still April but spring has ended here. The flowers are gone, it's all uniform green. Nights are still cold but with day-time temperatures around 25°C it feels like summer.
 
One of the few trees still in flower is the Horse Chestnut, an ornamental tree from the Balkans. I like them a lot, it's such a majestic tree with large pretty flowers. Very delicate though and plagued by many diseases.
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Yes I understood that.

Some of our shrubs flowering at the moment.
Lilac, Golden Rain, Wisteria and our giant Peonies. Look at the bees for size comparison!

It's been really hot but now a cold wave has struck, only around 10°C this week.
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Weather is cool and rainy though it is generally extremely dry this spring.

A swarm of Common Swifts in Nymphenburg Park, with a few Swallows intermixed. They want to migrate North but are blocked by the bad weather in Eastern Europe.

An European Common Frog, been a while since I've last seen a frog, amphibians are rare.

An unknown spider has caught a Red-and Black froghopper. Both about 1cm in size.

A large unknown wild bee on the thistle Jurinea mollis. The flower is about 5 cm wide.

Wild Roses in bloom, they come in every shade from white to purple. But their flowering time is short, only a few weeks. By end of may the flowers are gone.
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More critters eating our roses and grape vines.
I posted pics of the same species here 2 years ago in the Random thread, but made with my DSLR. The Pixel 8 Pro phone does a decent job but tends to oversharpen It also has noticeable distortion and coma off-center. A real 2000K camera with a 1000K lens still makes better pics, even if it's almost 20 years old.
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Some DSLR photos for comparison, taken with a 15 year old camera and edited on a 20 year old computer. Still beats a modern flagship phone camera.

1)Drepanepteryx phalaenoides
Also called 'dead leaf' for obvious reasons. A small neuropteran about 1.5cm. Plays dead when disturbed. I only see one or two specimens come indoor attracted to the light at night each year, but every year. The larvae are the nightmarish ant-lions. I have their funnel-traps in a dry spot in the garden.

2)Plebejus idas mating. Female left, male right. These small blue butterflies are common in dry meadows. There are several almost indistinguishable species. 2-3cm wingspan.

3) Caterpillar of Polygonia c-album, feeding on a stinging nettle. About 3cm in length

4) Some iridescent green Chrysomelinae beetle. I can't identify it, maybe Chrysolina graminis. About 1cm in size.
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Saw a huge male stag beetle this evening!
We were going or a walk, noticed something moving on the street between parked cars. The stag beetle was on its back moving its legs. These critters really have trouble when they're on their back on a flat surface.
It's not an earthworm, but I still made host get a twig and the beetle quickly grabbed it with its leg so we could lift him up. Really bg and heavy, the heaviest insect we have here. Put it on a nearby tree. Stag beetles are rare, we don't see one every year. They clumsily fly in the evening in early summer. Unbelievable they an fly at all. These beetles spend 5-8 years as larvae in the decaying wood. The beetles only live a few weeks. If they aren't eaten by birds.
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Alice was hiking in Northern Italy and brings you even more pics of rare plants and bugs

But we start of the most dangerous animals you can encounter there - cows and swans. Especially aggressive when they have offspring to protect
 >>/7205/
The lake floor is covered by white limestone powder washed in from the surrounding mountains. Looks like coral sea. The dark blue is just where it gets deeper. Awesome lake but cold. Went snorkeling but you can't stay in there for long without a neoprene suit. Not a lot of underwater life, too oligotrophic.
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Moar orchids
Cephalanthera is also a semi-mycoparasite.
The rare Nigritella can only be found high up in the mountains. 
Gymnadeniia is pollinated by a Hummingbird hawk-moth. It has about 5 cm wingspan
We did find the biggest orchid of Europe, the Lady's slipper, but it was already past bloom
 >>/7208/

Right, convergent evolution.

Hummingbird > Moth

Too many flying squirrel like things to mention have done this. I think it's Madagascar that has one genetic line that made everything from mice to canids.
Wow stunning photos! You took those with your phone? I really wanna go to the alps once. It's so different from the ecosystem here. What was the temperature?
 >>/7210/
Yep, all with the Pixel 8 Pro.
The mountains are awesome but you mustn't expect any sort of wilderness. It's a millennia old cultured landscape. Basically a pasture surrounded by civilization. Temperature was about 20-25°C in the valleys and 10-15°C up on the mountains in around 2000m altitude
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The nigger butterflies (unironically called that in German) of the genus Erebia are mostly found in mountain areas. No other butterflies go higher than these guys. The caterpillars take several years to develop in the short alpine summers.
Pieris bryoniae is also a mountain species, the others are found everywhere though Coenonympha arcania is generally rare. Vanessa cardui is one of the most common butterflies.
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Zygaenidae (day-active moths) are poisonous and can release cyanide so nobody eats them. They have red-black warning coloration and don't flee like most insects. They are numerous for a short time of the year.

We continue with a few beetles. The  hairy rose beetle, two longhorn beetles one of which host gave up on identifying. And a predatory green tiger beetle. In contrast to their hunting behavior, they're very shy and immediately fly away if you approach. Took host a while to get a pic. Common in warm, dry locations. All those guys are quite small, 2-3 cm.
 >>/7208/
Your orchids look completely different from the ones here. I would never have guessed those were orchids at all. All the flowers are very different, much more gracile.
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A crab spider on European Milkweed.
Phyteuma - the Devil's Claw is related to bellflowers despite its weird narrow flowers.
The bearded bellflower is found  at medium-high altitude.
Two strikingly blue gentianas which only occur far above the treeline on the mountaintops.
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Aquilegia has bizarre complex flowers. The dark variety is mainly found in the alps.
Digitalis grandiflora - a poisinous plant of lower alttudes
Pinguicula alpina - a carnivorous high altitude species with sticky leaves which traps tiny insects
Two ultra-rare lilies with huge orange flowers we have never ever found before, and now we found both. Only a single specimen each. First host thought these were some invasive garden escapees, but they're the real deal. There's also a similar purple one that is more common but we didn't find it.

That's it from our hiking trip, but more domestic insects to follow soon!
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A few days ago at night while reading, we saw a big insect helplessly flapping around on the wall, attracted by the light. It superficially looked like a dragonfly but host immediately recognized it as the imago of an antlion. We rarely see one every other year, but this one turned out to be SSS rare. And it had a problem. First I thought its wings were crippled but it turned out its hindwings were caught in a spiderweb and tied together. It tried to fly with its forewings only but that didn't work. 
Luckily it came across me who is not only the Savior of the Earthworm and the Stag Beetle, but also the Antlion.

In contrast to the nightmarish larvae that make any horror movie look ridiculous, the imagines are frail and weak, much weaker than the dragonflies they superficially resemble. That greatly helped catching and fixating the patient. Host got two preparation needles and a razor blade and was able to remove the sturdy spiderweb that was wrapped around the hindwings with minor wing damage (see tip of right hindwing). After taking a few photos, we released the antlion back into the night and it slowly fluttered away never to be seen again.

Looking at the photos, it turned out this was not the usual antlion found here. We have a sheltered dry place under a pine tree in the garden where the funnel-shaped traps of its larvae can be seen. No, this guy had much darker wing pattern and was identified as Dendroleon pantherinus, the Panther-Treelion. While first described in 1787, very little is known about these animals. Their larvae hide in decaying wood and over the centuries only a handful were ever discovered! The species is widely distributed in the Mediterranean but always rare. Very few have ever been seen in SW-Germany. May be the first recorded sighting in Munich.
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Ok, in your location it's a few magnitudes harder. Diversity in Europe is low. There's a lot of websites that offer identification guides. For plants, AI apps have become crazily good. I still think you should be able to identify most wildlife you see in a city even in Singapore. Remember 90% or so species are so rare that you probably will never encounter them. The fact that you stumble across them in an urban environment already means that they are most probably very common.

Another relatively rare guest I have never seen before in my life, not ultra-rare but clandestine. One of very few plant-hoppers we have in Europe. About 1 cm long. Apparently it's not even an invader from the South but occurs all the way to Scandinavia. Every time you find something new, you also learn something new.


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