While walking around coastal meadows in search for interesting stuff to put on photographs, I usually record short videos from time to time. When I accumulate enough of this video material, usually about 15 - 25 minutes of close up look at the natural world, it's time to organize that stuff in a relatively coherent video and put it on 3Speak ... to stay there, hopefully forever.
I recorded the beauty and interesting behaviors of the species you'll see in the video, during the last 10 days, or so. Have a good viewing. :)
In the following text, you'll find the names of the species, or just families when I wasn't able to find the exact species, that you'll see, or already saw in the video ... as always in this series, the insects and spiders are listed in order in which they appear in the video ... from first to the last, from the start to the end.
00 : 00 - 02:12 Courtship of the brown Argus butterflies (Aricia agestis)
02:12 - 04:36 A look at the large web of the Argiope lobata spider. You can see the big, very distinctive looking female and the small, inconspicuous male here. The sexual dimorphism is very pronaunced in this species, male and female look like two completely different kinds of spider. I recorded this footage in the evening, while the summer storm was approaching, soon after the events you'll see or saw in the video, strong wind started to blow, and heavy rain fell on spiders and everything.
04:36 - 06:40 In this segment of the video, you'll see (or you just saw) a bunch of grasshopper species present on these meadows. I found out the names of some species, but not of all.
Black grasshopper that appears in is the Omocestus rufipes, the color in this species vary, this grasshopper is elegantly black with some red details, but they can also come in green, brown, and green - brown variations. In you can see (although kind of just barely) the well camouflaged cone-headed grasshopper Acrida ungarica. It looks like a creature made of dried out grass. In the rest of this segment, you can see some nymphs and some adults of species that I can't name ... yet.
06:40 - 12:18 The material for this his whole chapter was recorded on the same day, in approximately one hour, while sitting by an "island" of Mentha longifolia plants in the middle of the meadow.
The little black bees with vivid red abdomen are the Sphecodes albilabris. I don't know the name of the moth, the small wasp and another, slightly bigger bee species with distinctively elongated abdomen that appear in this segment of the video. Here, in 11:09 - 11:12 exactly, you can also see an interesting bee - hunter wasp, the Philanthus triangulum, commonly known as European beewolf. These solitary wasps feed on nectar as adults, but adult females hunt the bees that serve as a canned food for the growing larvae.
12:18 - 13:44 The Tylopsis lilifolia bush - crickets (Tettigoniidae family) that come in a nice variety of greens and browns. Here you can see a couple of variations camouflaged on various vegetation.
13:44 - 14:04 The minuscule Kochiura aulica, a spider from the Theridiidae family, has caught some shiny leaf beetle.
14:04 - 14:32 Some big, fat and pretty colorful bush - cricket (Tettigoniidae family). I don't know the exact species.
14:32 - 15:16 Argiope lobata spiders again. The female has caught some big grasshoppers, and that makes the scene look kind of spectacular. This was recorded a couple of days after the storm. The web was rebuilt practically in the same place, give or take 10 - 20 centimeters.
15:16 - 15:42 The colorful Apion frumentarium weevil.
15:42 - 16:02 The Agalmatium bilobum planthopper.
16:02 - 16:35 The colorful red - white - violet version of the Thomisus onustus crab spider that comes in a nice variety of colors, the colors and markings inside this species can vary so much that it's easy to confuse two Thomisus onustus spiders for two different related species.
16:35 - 20:02 Some small flies, I don't know anything about them - noticed then for the first time a few days ago, are defending their territory on the branch of the young elm tree. There is a wet spot on the branch where the sap comes out of the plant, it's like a little feeding pool, and the flies defend it. First, you can see them successfully chasing some big black wasp.
Then one single fly tries to harass the Polistes gallicus paper wasp - quite unsuccessfully this time.
Finally, with no other insects around the pool, the flies fight among each other.
I never observed this behavior, and recording this was a great fun ... although quite difficult because I was crouched in a very uncomfortable semi - crouched position under the lower branches of a small tree.
20:02 - 21:29 Some spiders from the genus Cheiracanthium of the Miturgidae (Prowling Spiders) family, don't know the exact species, are mating and then resting inside the sack made by folding and stitching the leaves of the Chenopodium plant.
21:29 - THE END Plebejus argus butterflies feeding and flying around the Knautia arvensis flowers. Some minuscule, aggressive ants also appear in this segment. They are trying to chase the butterflies away from time to time.
And that's all. :) Hope you enjoyed this mini - documentary of mine. As always in these posts on HIVE, the video is my work - THE END.
▶️ 3Speak