I went for a walk today ... on two occasions ... so this post it's a product of two walks around two pretty different places here in my area ...
... first I had to do a few things in the city, and so, on my way back home, I made a stop in suburbia, on meadows just outside the city.
Many small trees were in bloom ...
... these white flowers belong to the wild cherry (Prunus avium) ...
... you can see a multitude of fresh young, green leaves among the flowers ...
... right now this doesn't look like important information ...
... but just a few shots later :) just wait and see ...
... this will become an important distinguishing factor ... because ...
... I photographed quite a few similar flowers for this post ...
... these, accompanied by fresh, new reddish leaves ...
... are the flowers of cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera) ...
... these are of course, closely related plants ...
... with colorful edible fruits, considerably smaller than on cultivated versions of the same tree ...
... but still a sweet free refreshment for people passing by.
After this lovely white - red combination ...
... it's time for the third related species ...
... the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) ...
... here I didn't see any foliage ...
... just dense clusters of beautiful flowers ... most branches were completely in bloom ...
... but some ...
... were covered with small buds.
Petals were falling from the completely developed flowers ...
... some ended up attached to the blades of grass ... while photographing these fallen petals ...
... I noticed two very common European lady beetles of the Coccinella septempunctata species ... one of them you saw in the opening shot, and the other one is here. After that ...
... I sat in my car and continued driving back home ... but, when I arrived in my hometown ...
... instead of going home, I decided to continue another 5 - 7 kilometers, to the nearby village of Liznjan ... I passed through the village, passed by the port and stopped in the costal area ...
... on the hill made from the material excavated from the nearby stone quarry ...
... there is a nice view from this elevated place, especially on the clear blue day like this ... I could even see part of the distant Velebit mountain range with large snow covered areas ... this can be seen only after the dry northern wind has cleared the often humid atmosphere.
Here you can see some abandoned buildings of the old military base ... that was a goat farm some years after the military had left, and now it's just abandoned and free to explore at will.
The last layer of land on this photograph is the mountain Uchka, the highest peak in this region, situated on the northeastern border of the peninsula.
Here near Liznjan, in the area traditionally known by the name of Marlera, on the stony plateau with the view on the sea ... I walked around some pine trees ...
... exploring the coniferous details, there were no attracting flowers to put on photograph, but I found this beautifully shaped small cones ...
... and some even smaller, very colorful ones, that can be a pretty adequate replacement for flowers in the shot.
I found also some much bigger cones on the same tree ...
... and on them some minuscule resin formations ...
... ideal for macro shooting.
On this cropped image you can see the minuscule spheres of pollen caught by the sticky resin with a beautiful refreshing aroma ...
The pollen has fallen from these small clusters of pollen cones, from the same or from the neighboring trees.
Here are two more small gray cones ... and on the following shot ...
... you can see the elegant work of some potter wasp ...
... I don't know exactly which species has made this little masterpiece.
Here is another example of insect architecture found on the same tree ... a big, communal silky nest made by pine processionary caterpillars ... this is the larval stage of the Thaumetopoea pityocampa moth.
When I got closer to the silky structure ... and took a look through the macro lens ...
... I found some arachnids there, among the needles and threads ...
... these are Phalangium opilio harvestmen ...
... three of them were hanging on this nest ...
... it was pretty hard to get a clear shot among all these needles and threads ...
... when I was relatively satisfied with what I photographed ... when I changed my focus from the tree down to the stony terrain before my feet ...
... I saw something that look like a flower fallen from some plant above the stones ...
... but a better look revealed that this flower was grown like that ...
... this is the Taraxacum parnassicum plant ... a dandelion species ... and now ...
... with this view on the sea and distant blue lands across the bay ... it's time to end this post ... as always, the photographs are my work - THE END.