המועדפים של nikathepianist

Ruby-throated Hummingbird
The sun was setting, while we were playing basketball on a street in Los Angeles with friends when we suddenly got surprised by a little tiny miracle bird! We had no idea what it could be and tried to take a few pictures of it, however, most of them were quite bad, due to lack of light. Then, the next day it came back! And we managed to get a bit better pictures, however, it was moving so fast that it was hard to focus!
The Ruby-throated Hummingbird, with the binomial name of Archilochus colubris, likes to live in open deciduous woodlands and feed on nectar usually of red and orange tubular flowers, these can include cardinal flowers, red buckeyes, trumpet creeper and rarely tree sap. While the flowers adapted to signal high amounts of nectar with the colour red, the hummingbirds adapted to see this colour.
The relationship between all hummingbirds and the flowers they feed on is amazing. Most species can only feed on one species of flower and that species can often only be pollinated by one species of hummingbird! However, the ruby-throated hummingbird feeds on many different types of flowers.
The ruby-throated hummingbird is quite rare in Los Angeles, however, there are a few sightings every year. They are often sighted in the East and South of North America, including New York and breed in the East.
Despite their small size, Archilochus colubris, live for a very long time. The average age for these hummingbirds is around 7 years. However, the oldest banded ruby-throated hummingbird was around 9 years and 1 month old!
Archilochus colubris nest in trees such as oak, birch and hornbeam. The females take care of their offspring, they usually have 2 clutches a year, however, occasionally they can have 3 clutches. Amazingly both male and female ruby-throated hummingbirds are aggressive to other hummingbirds, except during courtship, which only lasts a few minutes.
Hummingbirds get their name from the humming sound they make during flight. This is caused by a ruby-throated hummingbird beating its wings around 53 times a second. The wings of a hummingbird are only connected to the body at one point, allowing them to rotate almost 180 degrees and giving them high agility!
Urbanisation is a huge threat to hummingbirds, as urbanisation reduces the hummingbird’s habitat massively and makes their flowers scarce to find. We don't know exactly how much habitat has been destroyed due to urbanisation, but there is a way we can help! One way people have been helping with this is by planting the trees and plants from which hummingbirds feed. So... Keep planting!

Mediterranean house gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus)
Today I have encountered these two little beautiful things… by moving things in the garden, looking for rock and minerals with my camera, I noticed something walking on my camera strap, I screamed ( ups…😂😇 it scared me) Mediterranean house geckos, also known as Hemidactylus turcicus or the Turkish Gecko, just climbed up towards my neck. 😊
This species of gecko lives in the Mediterranean, as suggested by the name, however, they were introduced to North America and are now an invasive species over there 😊 Naughty little things, but we can’t blame them, can’t we?
These Geckos get between 8 and 12 cm long as adults, however, when they hatch, they are around 0.1 cm long. By the time they are one year old they have reached their full size. These small reptiles often live around humans, using any light to help them feed, as this attracts their pray at night. They usually eat by slowly advancing towards their pray and then grabbing it in their mouth, eating all sorts of insects including crickets and worms. Their skin is irregular having many bumps, some of their bumps have different colours such as brown and black. They prefer hot and humid climates, between 28 and 32 C and 60-75% humidity in the day. Geckos can easily get stressed and feel endangered and when this happens, they drop their tail, as a defence mechanism to distract birds. Although their tail will grow back, it is very bad for a gecko to lose its tail, as they store vital fat reserves there, which would result in them needing to spend more time and energy hunting. The feet of a gecko are very grippy and have small claws on their toes, which allow them to climb on almost any surface! In some of our pictures, you can see how they can easily climb on glass!
Since the underside of their bodies is see-through, people often put them in glasses or jars to try and record their heartbeat or even sometimes find an egg, however, this can cause stress to a gecko if incorrectly handled and in a container for an extended period of time. We kindly offer a jar to these two little guys and gently lure them into it to try to get some pictures of their feet sticking to slippery glass, unfriendly one left immediately, blended into the environment, friendly one though made a few circles inside, but moving way too fast for any good photos. My friend hung around and was ready to climb up and play for a bit longer, very sweet they were totally different personalities.
Although these cute little creatures seem to be benefiting from human light and therefore humans, this may also be confusing them, in cities as the temperature doesn't change much between day and night and neither does the light intensity, this affects their temperature control habits. Therefore, it is always best to leave wild animals wild. If an animal is friendly you can interact with them if they wish but don’t force them into anything or interfere with their ways I was very happy to share a moment with these beautiful little things in our shared environment. 😊

Bottlenose dolphins! Wonderful treat, seeing them today. Tursiops truncatus is the binomal name for bottlenose dolphins. Bottlenose dolphins are one of only four species of dolphin in the Mediterranean! You can find three other species there; Striped dolphins(Stenella coeruleoalba), Risso’s Dolphins(Grampus griseus) and Common dolphins(Delphinus delphis). Dolphins are mammals and, therefore, give birth to living young and feed them milk.
Bottlenose dolphins, the one we seen today, can get up to 500kg in weight and up to 4.3 m in length! Pretty amazing!
Bottlenose dolphins are very social and very playful creatures. Living up to 50 years old, they form bonds among themselves, protecting each other, hunting together and mating. They often like to surf waves and that's why they often go around big boats trying use the waves they make usually to gain speed. They can swim up to 35.5 km/h, or 22 m/h! These dolphins sometimes make bubble walls by letting air out from their blow hole, which they then swim through for fun! Bottlenose dolphins can hold their breath for up to 12 minutes! They do this by exchanging 80% or more air between their lung and the outside air. Which is much more than humans do, humans only exchange around 17%, which means that dolphins has much higher level of oxygen each time they take a breath, meaning they don't have to breathe as often as we do. A pod of bottlenose dolphins, a group, often make mud walls around their pray, waiting for them to try to escape they eat the ones that leave the mud wall! They feed on fish, shrimp and squid. They live in deep and shallow waters, which is pretty handy, meaning they have a wider range of food choice.
Bottlenose dolphins are known for jumping quite high. One of the highest jumps recorded in the wild was 4.7 meters high, 15 feet! Unfortunately, they didn’t jump that high for us (smiley) ! However, in captivity bottlenose dolphins can jump up to 6.1 meters high, 20 feet! Dolphins jump to improve visibility, improve navigation and just for fun. They gain this speed by swimming down deeper towards the ocean floor and then coming up at a high velocity. This means the deeper they go and the longer they gain speed the higher they will jump.
Bottlenose dolphins inhabit the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. They can use this area for seasonal migration, for example, some dolphins travel south in winter and then north again in summer.
On some of the pictures below you can see marks on a mummy dolphin and some on her baby dolphin's fin. These marks are called "rake marks", which were made by other dolphins. This usually happens to establish or maintain social hierarchy, however, sometimes it can just be caused while they are playing. Rake marks also happen in other species of dolphin, for example, Risso's dolphin can almost be recognised for its rake marks and scratches all over its body.
Unfortunately all dolphins are also very affected by sea pollution and plastic! Many dolphins die every year due to plastic ingestion! The WWF has estimated that around 100,000 marine mammals die every year as a result of plastic pollution! Fishing gear is also huge problems for dolphins and the second main reason of marine mammals dying is being entanglement in fishing nets and gear.
Fishing gear is often swept away accidentally from boats. Sometimes it is even deliberately thrown away into the ocean when broken! An approximation of 8 million tonnes of plastic enters the oceans every year! 640, 000 tonnes of this have been estimated to be ghost fishing gear! (Ghost fishing is name given to the gear, mainly nets that has been lost and thrown in the seas and oceans)
We must stop not caring for what we do! We must stop just throwing things away! We must reuse, recycle and reduce our waste! Please help stop our waste problem! Every small change can make a big difference! And it will just maybe save a baby dolphin or its mummy.
Trust me it's worth of thinking about our personal responsibility. If we all do it for ourselves, we are working together for all living beings on the earth, no effort required just a little bit of care and a common sense.

Did you know that the highest ever "hum" of a cicada that was recorded was 108.9 decibels? If 150 dB is enough to burst your eardrums and 185-200 dB can kill you, imagine how loud that is! Cicadas have a special organ that is almost unique amongst insects called the tymbal, they contract and release the tymbal muscle.
There are many Cicada orni in our garden! All though they make a not very comforting sound, they are good for many things in our ecosystems! Depending on the species and their environment the egg, larva and pupa form of a cicada can vary dramatically. For example, here, in France, the cicada cycle is 1-year, but in the northeastern quarter of the US, there is a 17-year cicada life cycle. Once they emerge adult cicadas, no matter the species, only live for 4-6 weeks! However, this is 4-6 weeks of breeding, reproduction and almost unlimited food for any carnivorous animal (or plant)! For the northeastern US species, this is a once in a life time bounty for most! Even though they only come every 17 years they come in their thousand to reproduce, but yet so many surviving to mate and lay their eggs, enough probably have even more the next 17 years! However, this 17-year cycle can be much more risky than the European 1-year cycle. The 17-year cycle means that the majority of the population of that species depends on the weather, food, predators... of those 4-6 weeks and if there is a change just that year, it can have a huge impact on the cicada population in 17 years time! On the other hand, the 1-year cycle is more sustainable, if there is a temperature drop or predator increase they can come back at it the next year. Even if this happens twice in a row it will not make that much of a difference as it would to the 17-year cycle cicadas. Despite this development difference their food between species doesn't vary much. As larva they eat sap and juices from tree roots and as adults they trim down tree branches and leaves. This gives more space for birds to eat other insects. Once the have mated, the females lay their eggs in small holes they make in tree branches where they can lay between 200 and 400 eggs! Then, after 6-10 weeks cicada larvae, called nymphs, emerge from the eggs. Then depending on the species the time then spend as nymphs can vary widely, but for the European species it is about 11 months until the nymphs emerge and turn into adult cicadas. Then the whole life cycle repeats again!
Did you that cicadas undergo incomplete metamorphosis? Cicadas instead of going pupa and then turning into an adult, cicada nymphs tunnel their way out of the ground and start shedding their hard, old skin and becomes an adult. Cicadas grow their wings and new exoskeleton below their current one. This means that cicadas don't just grow and get bigger, they grow, but don't get bigger. Then they emerge and get bigger without growing! Cicadas are very vulnerable before their new exoskeleton hardens, which typically takes a few days. The molt itself only takes 1 to 2 hours, which is actually quite a long time for an insect! The first stage of the molt is when a small opening begins to form on the back part of the cicadas exoskeleton. Once this has formed, the cicada will start to push its way out of it, starting with the head. Once the head and most of the cicada is out, it hangs out of its old exoskeleton at around a 90 degree angle from its back legs. Then, it starts to bring its head closer to its old exoskeleton and once it can reach it, it grabs on to it and brings the last part of its body out of the old exoskeleton. It starts pumping liquid to its wings, inflating them, till they get straight and relatively hard. Then, finally they start to walk and find a safe place to hid, until its exoskeleton hardens. Finally, they can start mating!

Hermann's tortoise, also known as Testudo hermanni, is a common tortoise species in the Mediterranean. We have two living in our garden this one is a baby that is around 2 to 3 years old ! extremely cute and tiny, fist time she appeared this year!
We were waiting it for a long time, and here she is FINALLY.
We should be seeing it more often from now on, and we will be doing many photo sessions all the way until October.
Hermann's tortoise is a reptile and therefore a cold blooded creature. This means that they need the warmth of the sun to be able to be move, but they also need shade not to overheat and to rest in. That's why they often hide in our garden under big leaves 🙂. If Hermann's tortoise does not get enough heat from the sun, it will not be able to move or live properly. Therefore, they hibernate from around October to April. This means that they are protected from cold weather and lack of food. Hermann's tortoise are mainly herbivorous, however, they often eat small insects, warms, feathers and bones as a diet supplement. Often, it seeks mushrooms and plants that are toxic to mammals. Some people believe that this rids them from intestinal parasites. Just like with young turtles, Hermann's tortoise eggs and young are at risk of being eaten by birds and some mammals. However, due to their ability to hide in their shells as adults, they have very few natural predators.
Their typical life span in the wild is 40-60 years, however, in captivity they can live up to 100 years. Hermann's tortoise usually become sexually mature after 10-20 years. This means that after hatching they have to survive a minimum of around 11 years to actually have their own offspring! Once they reach sexual maturity they are about 13-20 cm in length and can weight around 3-4 kg. Females are usually bigger and heavier than males. After warming up in the sun in the early morning Hermann's tortoises usually eat until mid morning, then hid from the heat of the day and become active again in the evening. Females usually dig their nests of 2-12 eggs from April to October. It is also believed that tortoises can lay fertile eggs up to 4 years after mating. However after every season fertility reduces significantly.
Hermann's tortoises are often kept in captivity and are easy to buy, trade and breed.
This is very bad for the tortoises as they need large areas to feed from and need constant temperature regulation and shade. If the temperature of a tortoise gets above 39-44 degrees it can die. Keeping any animal in captivity is cruel and minimises the chances of the animal growing to be able to reproduce and not be disadvantaged. Hermann's tortoises are an easy way to make money for some people, as after hibernation they often come back up in people garden, which happens quite often to us 🙂, but other people pick them up and sell them. Since they are endangered and rare, even though they are protected, many people want to have a rare animal in their house.
If you have a Hermann's tortoise as a pet you should try to give it high temperature during the summer and shade and low temperature during the winter, to match their normal life styles. Usually, if you try to imitate the climate that is in some places in the Mediterranean coast that should suit your tortoise well. However, I am strongly against animal captivity, since once they have been captive for even less than a year, they will not be able to naturally reinstate and adjust them selves to their normal habitat and environment. So, pleassee don't have animals in captivity!
If you find a website where people are illegally selling turtles and tortoises please report it to us, the police or any nature conservation organisation. This trade must be stopped to insure the safe future of Hermann's tortoises!
Also, please share any information you have to your friends and us, as every person that understands the importance of turtles and tortoises, is another person helping turtles!
We must find a way to make protection laws more strict and make it much harder for people to get away with these kind of things!
Lets all stay responsible to everything living sournding us.

Ring-necked Pheasant found near our beach! The one on the picture is a male, he most likely mated with several females between April and June. Now, his job as a father is to keep possession of his territory and defend his chicks and females. The life span of Ring-necked Pheasant is around three years in the wild, however, in captivity they can live up to 18 years old. Ring-necked Pheasant eggs usually take around 23-27 days hatch and are incubated by the female only. The eggs are around 45 mm by 36 mm and are smooth. The females usually lay between 7 and 15 eggs and have one clutch per year, usually nesting under a bush in a shallow depression in the ground. These pheasants have a highly varied diet, usually including fruit, worms, berries, seeds, grass and insects. The Ring-necked Pheasant's latin name is Phasianus colchicus, Phasianus for pheasant and colchicus for of Colchis (now known as Georgia, a country in the black sea were pheasants were first discovered by europeans. Ring-necked Pheasants like habitats like fields, farms and weedy areas. Due to lose of habitat and shooting Ring-necked Pheasant population is decreasing, however a bit of good news is that, at the moment, Ring-necked Pheasants are not endangered!

A Gypsy moth caterpillar in my garden! The naughty caterpillars in larva and caterpillar form can eat a foot squared of leaves per day! Amazingly the male and the female look different as moths! The males are have a brown gray pattern and the females are white with some black spots. As larva and caterpillars they can be extremely harmful to trees!

Not a hornet! The hornet mimic hover fly feeds on nectar and pollen, when in their larva form they are predators to aphids! It is more than welcome to save our almond tree, our almond tree is covered with aphids! The hornet mimic hoverfly is a migratory hoverfly, migratory hoverflies are often considered the second most important pollinators, after bees! It can grow up to 2cm long! It is rare in Northern England but common in the South of England and Europe! I took a picture of it thinking it was a hornet!

The usefulness of wasps!

Fig trees are trees that can be monoecious or dioecious. This means they have different pollination cycles, we will go into more detail about this a bit later. Fig trees produce figs which can be green or purple when ripe. A fig is very spherical and is attached directly to a branch. On the inside of a ripe fig, it is usually red.
Fig wasps average size is around 2 to 3 mm. They are usually black and yellow and have transparent wings. As adults they feed on fluids of wounded animals and nectar. Fig wasps pollinate fig trees.
Figs have to us a very bizarre relationship with fig wasps! Figs use fig wasps to be pollinated, however, the fig wasps also use the figs to have an incubation area for their offspring.
There are two different types of fig trees. Monoecious and dioecious. The monoecious type of fig tree produces both male and female flowers on the same plant. Whereas the dioecious type of tree has two types of trees: the gall figs and the seed figs. The gall figs have both male and female flower and the seed figs have only female flowers.
This means that the fig-wasp relationship is different in these two types of fig trees.
In the monoecious trees the female flowers mature first, they produce a scent, which attracts the pregnant female wasp to it. The female wasp enters the syconium, which is the green structure in which the fig flower is held. The female wasp is intending to lay her eggs. She is carrying pollen from the fig that she was born in, which she deposits once she enters the flower.
Then, she starts to lay her eggs, using ovipositors. Having only 24 hours left to live, she injects the flowers with a chemical, transforming them into fat, from which her offspring will be able to feed. Having done this, she dies.
After about 2 months, young wasps will enter adulthood. They mate among each other, and the males will bite through the syconium for the females to go through. The males are completely blind and wingless! There only job is to mate and make a passage for the females. After this, they soon die.
The females, on the other hand, collect pollen from the male flowers, which recently ripened. Then, they go to find a new syconium to lay their eggs in and repeat the cycle.
However, in the dioecious trees, the life cycle of the wasps is slightly different! If the female enters a female flower in order to lay her eggs, she will pollinate the flower, but her young will not be able to grow!
Female wasps often enter the female flower, due to confusion of the scent that the fig produces to attract them. The female fig flower imitates the scent of the male flower in order to “trick” the wasps into pollinating them.
Luckily for the wasps, their DNA will still be passed on as at least a few of her sisters or cousins will get to the right male flowers and their young will grow to be adults! The DNA of one wasp is not unique as they mate amongst themselves, meaning that they will all have the same DNA in the batch!
Therefore, this cycle can continue to benefit both the wasps and the figs!

European striped shield bug

Many European striped shield bugs, also known as Graphosoma lineatum, just appeared on our dill plants! European striped shield bugs get between 8 and 12 mm in length as adults. They are covered in black and red stripes on their backs and on their bellies they are red with black dots. The antennae are black and are in sections. This insect occurs in the entire Mediterranean sea and prefers hot and dry areas. Recently, it has been moving further north to Germany and Belgium, there is no proof yet of it being present in the UK, however, it was recently found in the USA, it is also present in Australia. European striped shield bugs love meadows a lot and that is probably why it was in our garden, which is blooming with high flowers and plants. Between June and October they can be found in all life stages and between October to around May the adults hibernate and therefore are very rarely found. European striped shield bugs are relatives to the green stink bugs, but luckily they aren't damaging our tomatoes! These insects apart from tasting very bad to birds, smell a bit like apples! They are often found on Apiaceae, like here, such as dill. Luckily for us, dill has a special adaption that makes it chemically protected. When we were trying to take pictures of it, a few of them started flying into my mummy and me, as soon as we moved away they went back to their business and didn't bother us if we didn't bother them. However, when we came back they started driving us away again and raising its wings on the side, as you can see in one of the pictures! It was actually quite cute how they were interacting and tell us off!

A new discovery this evening: a Palm Moth! The palm moth, also known as Paysandisia archon, are not native to Europe! They were accidentally introduced to Europe from Uruguay and central Argentina on Batia yatay and Trithrinax campestris plants which were imported from Argentina between 1992 and 1998. The palm moth feeds on many different species of palm, as its name suggests. An adult moth it's wingspan is between 9 and 11 cm. Females are usually slightly bigger than males and lay eggs of around 5 mm long and are cream coloured. Soon after they have mated the females can start laying eggs. They usually lay them in small groups of around 2 to 3 eggs. However, they can lay many batches, leading to up to 150 eggs per female. Males often use a single perch to land and stay on, if they are not flying around their small territories to protect the females from rivals. Once the eggs have been laid they spend a few weeks as eggs before turning into larvae. They stay as larvae for quite a long time. Depending on the sub-species, it can be between a bit less than a year to just under 2 years. Then they spend between 5 and 21 days in their redish cocoon form, before emerging as a beautiful Palm Moth.
Regardless of the fact that it is invasive and not native to my area, it is a very beautiful and peaceful moth!
Not much information is known about these moths, so please send me any observations or information you know about. I would really like to know more about these beautiful moths!

European Rhinoceros Beetle (male with horn, female without) was found in our garden! The European Rhinoceros Beetle, also know as Oryctes nasicornis, is a beetle from the family of Scarabaeidae, Scarab beetles, and subfamily of Dynastinae. As larvae the European Rhinoceros Beetle lives in and eats rotting wood, saw dust, fallen trees and other similar wood debris. The larvae take from two to three years to develop into a pupa, after digging itself a hollow hole in the group. Then it stays here for a few months till March-June and then adult males can live for 1-3 years, however, adult females don't usually live long after they mate. Females usually lay around 50 eggs at a time and it usually take three to four weeks for the eggs to hatch into larvae. European Rhinoceros Beetle are named after the horn on the males head, which is long and curved. The European Rhinoceros Beetle is rare and is in increasing threat to being extinct do to trade of exotic insects, pesticides and deforestation. It is now protected, but this does not stop illegal trade. Often species being protected puts them in more risk of being poached or captured if there are no punishments for doing so or it is easy to get away with!
There are many types of Rhinoceros Beetles, however many of them are endangered and in the amazon rainforest the Hercules Beetle (Dynastes hercules) is suffering from both deforestation and wild fires.
We must stop illegal trade of any living thing! We must stop deforestation and human causes for wild fires!