It happened on the last day of July, the 31st July 2021. I was walking ...
... along the dusty road, bordered with lush blackberry shrubs on one side, and the intricate mix of various grasses and herbaceous plant on the other.
The nights were hot, almost as days, back then ...
... this seaside area was teeming with life ...
... and I encountered quite a few interesting species - in interesting situations. Here you can see the Molobratia teutonus robber fly with its prey, some wild solitary bee, photographed in the late afternoon.
Later, in the evening ...
... with the sun almost down ...
... I came across another predator.
The European mantis (Mantis religiosa) on these photographs ...
... has caught a cricket ...
... the Schmidt's Marbled Bush-cricket (Eupholidoptera schmidti).
The cricket was a pretty big meal ...
... and the mantis was eating slowly ...
... so I was able to take plenty of photographs.
Too many, maybe ...
... but I don't see this kind of scene often. It was a pretty exciting encounter.
I didn't notice it when this photograph was taken, but only later at home, on the PC screen. There is some small fly near the mouth of the mantis ...
... on this cropped image, you can take a better look. The mantis was consuming its prey on the stem of the tall dry grass near the blackberry shrub. On the following photograph ...
... taken some hours before, in broad daylight, you can see a small Hairy Scale-cricket (Arachnocephalus vestitus).
This tree cricket ...
... the Oecanthus pellucens, was photographed on another leaf of the same shrub.
On this photograph, you can take a good look at both sides of the road, shrubs and the meadow.
This lovely red dragonfly ...
... the Sympetrum vulgatum ...
... was resting on the ear of grass.
The Common Straw Grasshopper (Euchorthippus declivus) was resting on some dry plant nearby.
Here you can see the wild carrots (Daucus carota) on the meadow, and the shrubs across the road.
There, on the blackberries shrubs, I photographed another Molobratia teutonus robber fly ...
... with the kind of prey that you already saw before, at the beginning of the post.
On this photograph, the victim is some different solitary bee species ...
... and the predator was a spider ...
... the Thomisus onustus crab spider.
An hour later, I noticed this interesting flying mealybug.
Mealybugs are Hemipteran insects from the Pseudococcidae family. I don't know the exact species, but I'm sure that this is a male. Only male can fly. The females are wingless. In some species, they have small, clumsy legs. In other species, females are completely sedentary. Pseudococcidae are commonly known also as the unarmored scale insects.
I never saw this fascinating insect before.
These minuscule males were flying around, and I spent an hour or saw trying to catch them with my camera. I took four relatively successful shots, and then I put the mealybugs from all those photographs and put them on one picture. You can see that composite photograph here. All these insects weren't present in the frame at the same time when I was photographing. Only here, in this post, they are flying together.
Some berries were black and ripe on that day, but most were still red and sour.
This portrait of a flying mealybug was taken on one of these red fruits. The minuscule insect looks great with the waxy white appendages on the abdomen.
I found also a few blackberry flowers among the fruits.
Here you can see yet another Molobratia teutonus fly. This one was resting on the leaf in the typical pose for this species.
At one point the fly flew away, and then returned with the prey, some black wasp.
Some meters further, on the shrubs, I found a dead honey bee (Apis mellifera) ...
... and the Lygus maritimus bug near the corpse.
This beautiful moth, the Merrifieldia malacodactyla, was photographed on the dry grass across the narrow dusty road. After taking this shot ...
... I saw some people behind the pretty tall vegetation.
When the group came closer, I saw the horses too.
When I continued sniffing around the shrubs ...
... I found this pretty peculiar little bug. The Geocoris erythrocephalus from the Geocoridae Family. Bugs from this family are commonly known as Big-eyed bugs.
This is the only Geocoridae species I ever saw. They are not very common nor diverse in Europe.
Some minuscule caterpillar was hanging above the scene.
A couple of hours later, as the sun was setting, I photographed this little moth ...
... and a friend that was there with me ... and that's it. As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.