/tulpa/ - Tulpa

 >>/6158/
Yes they're around but they don't bite here if temperatures are below 60Freedom units. Yesterday it was finally into the 50's and this morning 53 Great American Freedom degrees. Somthing like what 11.6666666667 Communist degrees. Eww.

The mosquitos know that they are pussies for temperatures below 60 World Domination Degrees. Poor babies get "sluggish" and stop laying eggs, therefore don't need da blood of the innocent to fuel them.

73 Future degrees today, gotta love that beautiful sea air. This is the issue though, that water is still 63 Fine beautiful degrees, so when there's an on-shore breeze, like 90% of the time, the night time temperature will be similar, especially on cloudy nights which is also very frequent.

All this to say I finally got to take a morning walk without being bitten by blood sucking bastards.

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 >>/6198/
It's awful here mosquito-wise. Host is dowsed in a mixture of 3 different insect repellents with DEET, icaridin and Ethyl-butylacetylaminopropionate and the fuckers simply don't care at all. Really nasty mosquitoes that are fast and hide immediately when you turn on the light. This and the ubiquitous trash makes me see Germany in a slightly more positive light right now.

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> Aedes aegypti
Oh yeah we got them too.
Government undertakes huge efforts here to fight them, especially eradicating any brooding sites in the city. Tiny places where water stands like flowerpots or choked drains or where puddles form. And they release millions of bacteria-infected mosquitoes that only produce male offspring and can't transmit diseases anymore, especially Dengue fever. The males don't sting but feed on nectar. It's a huge and high-tech topic here. We want a green city with lots of vegetation but no mosquitoes

 >>/6241/
> wolbachia
thats pretty nuts how the fuck does this work? eggsplain Dr. Alice!

no more pesky insects here we will get the first frost next week. already a lot later than usual

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 >>/6244/
> how the fuck does this work? eggsplain Dr. Alice!
Good topic!
Wolbachia interferes with the reproduction of host organisms in very complex ways. 
Basically the bacterium fucks up cell division in sperm which causes the embryo to die if infected sperm fertilizes an uninfected egg. However if both sperm and egg are infected, the bacteria in the eggs alter them in a way that synchronized their cell division to be compatible with infected sperm again and the embryo develops normally. How exactly this works is still unknown. Yes, it's pretty nuts.

You can read about cytoplasmatic incompatibility here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytoplasmic_incompatibility

The fancy thing is that Wolbachia does a number of things:
It inhibits virus replication inside the mosquito so they carry less viruses
Also an infection often reduces the lifespan of mosquitoes which gives them less time to spread diseases.
It can also lead to producing male offspring only, killing the blood-sucking females.

But that's very very complicated stuff and not so straightforward as the fancy posters suggest. Wolbachia-infection can very well also boost pathogen transmission depending on strain. Host is also very skeptical this has long-term benefits. Mosquitoes and their pathogens will adapt quickly.

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 >>/6244/
 >>/6264/

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 >>/6264/
 >>/6265/
> Cytoplasmatic incompatibility
Wow I didn't know this! I thought it just kills the females before they hatch.
At least for now it appears to work here, we monitor all disease cases by neighborhood and dengue cases have dropped where the infected mosquitoes were released. But it is still a trial.

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I saw a large owl at dusk!
Probably a tawny owl (Strix aluco) but we're not sure.
It circled over the garden twice, flew past host slightly above him only a few meters away. Though it was flapping its wings it made absolutely zero sound. Even small birds like sparrows produce audible noise, Owls don't.

I already said it in the VPT but in case you still believe in owls, I'll say it again: Owls aren't real! They're just a prop monted on strings or whatever but you can't fool me, that's not a live animal!

 >>/6264/
dont understand much of it but its creepy af. how does something like this develop?

 >>/6275/
> owl conspiracy
lmao

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Listen to this crazy.

I have a raised bed, about 3x9 and I throw compost in there like olf fruit and so on. This is the planter the huge sunflower grew.

Occasionally tomatoes sprout from store tomatoes and they groe tomatoes and I eat them.

This time, I'm not shitting you, there's a strawberry plant from the tops of strawberries I threw in there.

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Oh cool!
I've never heard about growing strawberries from seeds! Will it survive the winter?

I have planted guava seeds in a pot now. I wonder if they will germinate. It was a weird fruit from the botanical garden not from the market. The pulp and seeds were yellow but the seeds turned pitch black when I washed and dried them before potting. Like charcoal.

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 >>/6427/
> strawberry plant
Rare!
Make a photo for us!
It would be interesting what kind of fruit it bears. Commercial strawberries are highly hybridized so the offspring often splits and has traits which are significantly different from the parent plants.

 >>/6430/
Guavas are cool, I like their bark! The fruit are also good. We bought some pink ones on our recent holiday. They had lots of seeds but you could eat them. Keep in mind that some guava species are extremely invasive so you better not plant them out in nature. Well you live in a huge city anyway.

Harvested Medlars this weekend, they are the last fruit to ripen. They need cold to turn into a brown pulp that tastes like Apfelstrudel. The yellow fruit in the pic are not ripe and inedible. The brown are ready to be consumed or processed. I cook the ripe fruit  and squeeze them through a food mill with a sieve to remove the seeds and skin and get a brown mass. It can be frozen and will be used as cake and Christmas Cookie filling.

 >>/6430/
 >>/6437/
> some guava species are extremely invasive
inb4 Tamamo gets death penalty for spreading invasive plants

> medlars
don't think ive ever seen this fruit

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 >>/6427/

 >>/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?

 >>/6505/
These strawberries come rotten, it's just another scam. Oops all rotten.

 >>/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!

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It is winter, and the monarch butterflies don't care.

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 >>/6926/
Nice!
That's California for you. 
Only pirds here but a lot.
Long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus), shitty cellphone pic through window

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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Hey cool!
Your spring flowers are pretty. It only lasts a very short time, right?

 >>/7075/
 >>/7076/
noyce its barely starting here
we are supposed to reach 25°C this week though which is crazy for mid april

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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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Random flowers and my grape vine is waking up.

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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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 >>/7124/
No grapes are evergreen but many annuals become biennial like tomatoes and beans, and many birnnial become perennial. Like milkweed.

 >>/7125/

> no, grapes are evergreen 

Fucking...

THEY ARE NOT EVERGREEN!

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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.

 >>/7131/
 >>/7145/
 >>/7152/
Beautiful!
European nature is so different.

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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.

 >>/7164/
whoa thats some pro photos. i still cant believe you can identify all those critters lol

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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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 >>/7192/

> Plants and bugs

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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

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Icy turquoise lakes and the iconic pink Alpenrose

 >>/7204/
nice
the fuck is that color of the lake?

 >>/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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Orchids
Fully mycoparasitic Neottia without chlorophyll
Ophrys mimics female wasps in look, feel and scent

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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.