A bright orange Araschnia levana bathing in the spring sun
The Map Butterfly (Araschnia levana) is one of those small spring butterflies that emerge near the end of april and throughout may. While the red and black colouring on the upperside of the wings slightly resemble that of the Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) or Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album), it sports an underside unlike any other. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Araschnia levana, Butterflies, denmark, diphenism, invertebrate, Species, The Map
Right, there’s a post on its way. Just need to clean it up…
Meanwhile, here’s almost a picture of a hare:
Maybe if I stay real quiet the annoying man will go away...End 2005 initiative was taken to gather an European atlas of dragonflies. The project is being supported by the dutch European Invertebrate Survey and coordinated by Vincent Kalkmann of Naturalis - National Museum of Natural History in the Netherlands.
The result of this project, spanning 41 countries, is going to be the atlas itself in form of a book. It will contain introductory chapters followed by species accounts for each of the 130+ species encountered in Europe. Each account containing a distribution map and brief information on taxonomy, life history, habitat, flight histograms and conservation status.
An adult male Green Snaketail (Ophiogomphus cecilia) from the summer 2009, perched on a twig.
Recently a fair amount of my spare time has gone into sorting through the dragonfly collections kept at the Natural History Museum Aarhus. Some of the animals have been ID’ed by the collector and a lot are just tagged with a date and location and pinned. So the job so far has been to double-check identification and identify those that haven’t been given a name yet, note all the info on the collected animal, add co-ordinates and save the lot in a rapidly growing database.
It’s quite fun and a learning experience to sort through all this material. It provides a great opportunity to compare tricky traits between resembling species. (I’ll see if I can use some of those comparisions for a post later on.)
It’s also quite fascinating to see in how good shape some of the animals are, despite being collected back in 1896. (That’s like.. a very very… long time for something that was only meant to last a few months).
A larvae of the Blue Emperor (Anax imperator) awaiting unknowing prey to happen by. This exemplar was photographed in an aquarium early spring 2009 before being slipped back to its pond.
We’re soon done with the dry-collection. Next step; the alcohol preserved imagos and a few thousand larvae.
So far the schedule is to have a final database during this spring.
Tags: anax imperator, Dragonfly, european, invertebrate, odonata, ophiogomphus cecilia, Photography, scientific
Proper winter arrived earlier this week as snow blizzards hit the country.
Winter landscape
So what is an entomologist to do? Sit inside with a cuppa, sorting images and identifying alcohol soaked specimens whilst longing for the summer. I thought so, but then a fellow colleague mentioned Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Birch Catkin Bug, denmark, invertebrate, Kleidocerys resedae, snow, Species, true bug, winter
Aphodius distinctus without dung, just all clean and pretty
There you go, a dung-free Aphodius distinctus. I saw several a few weeks ago, wandering aimlessly around in the sands at the western coast of Jutland, pretty far from any fresh dung. Aphodius distinctus is a good flyer and spreads easily over far distances in search of fresh warm dung. It’s one of the most versatile dung beetles, able to feast on dung no matter the species that laid it, and can even make do with decomposing plant tissue.
Tags: Aphodius distinctus, Beetle, denmark, Dung beetle, invertebrate, Photography, Species
The Eurasian Dipper (Cinclus cinlus), hereafter dipper, is one of my favourite birds, and it is now back in Denmark for another winter sesaon. This splendid little fisher is just fascinating to watch while its doing its thing.
By first appearances it seems like any other bird of its size. What makes it special is its behaviour …. especially when feeding.
The Eurasian Dipper (C.cinlus) posing by the stream. I just love the white bib.
You’ll find your typical dipper fouraging in clear fast flowing streams, not too deep and with plenty of shallows reaches Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: birds, denmark, Dipper, Photography, Species
I’ve been taking macro photos for some years now and was up for a change. Birds! I thought. Not that macro doesn’t pose a challenge for me, I just felt like trying something different (and one of those huge white lenses… yum!).
I just started out this year. Being fascinated by some of the astonishing work shown by inspiring people (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) I thought “Well, just how hard can that be, I mean with one of those fantastic tele lenses and all..” I could hardly wait! I’m a capable biologist, I know where to find birds. I’ve seen tons of interesting motives and species.The amazing mind-baffling images of raptors that I was going to take, were already scrolling through my imagination. So is this going to be a post with all sorts of amazing bird photos? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Accipiter nisus, birds, denmark, distance, Eurasian Sparrowhawk, focal length, Photography
The Waspcatcher - Get rid of those annoying dangerously painful …. flower flies?
The local grocery store has been selling wasp-catchers again this year.
Unfortunately for the company selling them, the packaging is misleading. Unless they’re actually selling Specially Trained Elite Flower Flies (S.T.E.F.F) that take out wasps!! How cool would that be?
I was standing at the roadside, waiting for a friend, when I noticed the ants nurturing a batch of aphids on a stem. We had been walking through a large heathland and got separated on our way back to the car. I reasoned that my friend, being a curious biologist, probably found and stopped by something of interest, and so I had a little time to try and take a few shots of the ants activity. I have never really given ants a go before, so I had no idea which traits are typically used in identification. The idea was to take enough frames to identify them later at home. My first impression though was “Probably one of those red forest ants very clear from childhood memory (ouch).”
Formica sanguinea ants tending to lot of aphids
10 minutes later my friend showed up, I got up from the ground and we left for home. When I arrived home I showed the pictures to people who know stuff about ants. There wasn’t the slightest doubt as they proved my first impression wrong. It was the slavemaking Formica sanguinea. It’s Danish name translates literally to “Blood-red Raptor Ant”. Wow, awesome fierce name, what can it do?! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ants, denmark, invertebrate, Photography, Species
Every so often we enter a clouded yellow year. In this respect 2009 turned out to be wonderfully clouded, what delight! The Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) is a vibrant yellow and accomplished migratory butterfly. It is one of the most widespread butterflies in Europe and it is quite common in the northern parts of Africa through southern and eastern parts of Europe. Being a very able flier it can migrate thousands of kilometers in summertime, so it can be found in the more northern parts of Europe also, in scarce numbers. In good years it has been seen as far north as the northern Scotland and the Faroe Islands. Usually extremely rare in Denmark, some years not present at all, a small invasion hit us this summer, though it was nothing compared to tales of yonder where huge saffron yellow swarms blocked the sun from the sky or covered cliffs:
“While sitting on a cliff near Marazion in Cornwall, he perceived out at sea a yellow patch which, as it came nearer was seen to be a swarm og Clouded Yellows making for the land, flying low over the water and rising and falling over the crest of each wave, The cliffs were soon covered with them, and they stayed in the neighbourhood for several weeks.” - from Vere Temple
I was lucky myself to find a few fields of Lucerne with visiting Clouded Yellows. The individual above was photographed on a 70 ha field, energetically and determined cruising just above the flowers, dropping down here and there to lay a few eggs.
In their all year homes the Clouded Yellow can be found in all sorts of habitats, the most decisive factor seems to be Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Butterflies, denmark, photo thread, Species