From the garden

At least seven of such lovely pumpkins were eaten by slugs this year. I don’t count all the salad that they had eaten. A real pest, I tell you and it is very hard to fight them. I don’t kill them, so maybe they come back ... I hope that winter will be very cold and that the weather next spring will be fatal for them, otherwise we will have to find some other way to get rid of them. It takes absolutely too much time to pick them every day. The other day I found more than five of them in one single pumpkin flower! It is nothing special if I pick hundred of them on a single day.

I know that one kind of duck eats them (some say that chicken, too) but with having these comes another worry as they eat vegetables, too. We would need a fence and most probably a dog to guard them from foxes. We are actually caught in a vicious circle ...

Creature of the night

What’s that noise, I asked myself on a Friday night, when I heard a loud noise coming from our garden. Is it a neighbor’s dog or a fox? I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the door and saw a hedgehog trying to eat the cat’s food from the plate. Cats are never that loud at eating their food. It was the first time I saw this funny creature in our small garden although there are many around in the neighborhood.

I poured some milk and tossed more cats’ food into the plate. It was interesting to see the hedgehog pulling the plate around until it was stuck so that it could easily eat from it. Loud, fast and strong, that’s my description of this little animal. One of the cats was only watching it from a safe place, while one slug had already occupied the same plate.

Still too many people think that hedgehogs eat pears and apples because in the fairytales they are usually drawn with a pear or two on their back. Most people don’t know that they prefer meat to any fruit that might be offered to them.

I hope this one will survive the winter and more than that, that it will survive any close meetings with cars.

Kuterevo - the bear refuge (Croatia)

Don't search after the horses you've lost; they will return in seven days.
~ I-Ching readings

Volunteer's life in Kuterevo. (link)

Older bears at play (that grass in the picture is their food; they get some meat, too)

One of the bear names (i.e. Hubert)

Volunteers left their signs here

Frogs

Spring has woken the frogs, too. I am sure that most people who were passing by were wondering what I was doing in the middle of the river bed. Taking photos of the frogs, of course! There might be many tadpoles swimming in the puddles later in spring: Toad's spawn looks like a necklace:I hope there will be enough time over this weekend to check if the Moor Frogs have already come out of mud.

Oh, spring, you give us so many wonderful things!

Beauties in the air

I've been noticing lately lots of butterflies wherever I go. Where I live, especially one species is very common these days, you can see it on the photo. Most of them have damaged wings, which means that they have accomplished the missions in their lives. They won't live much longer, but they do bring some more joy before they perish - to the people who walk by and admire them for their lightness, litheness, beauty.

P.s.: My colleague who is doing a butterfly monitoring says that there had never been so many butterflies before. At least not in the last few years. I might be taking part in the monitoring tomorrow, so probably I will be back with some news from this part of the world again on Monday.

Animals

I noticed them two days ago when I went to the post office. Which was closed. So I had to go there again yesterday. This time I had my camera with me and took some shots. I don't know why they are there. I haven't seen any kindergartens in the neighborhood. They are quite big and if they were not so dirty, I would try and sit on one of those. Funny, there is still such child in me. Ž is sometimes very embarrassed. I know. B was different, he played along.I wonder how long these animals will be there. And if I ever find out why they are there at all.

Macro: 2

Talking about an owl in one of my previous posts I want to share with you a photo of one I made last year for an article I wrote for our birds magazine. It is made of a painted stone. I was quite happy with the result. I also painted some other stones, so owl has got a company in shape of a pink flower, a duck and a blue beetle.

Macro photos are lots of fun. Lately I keep noticing that all my things are really dusty. But I only notice this when I see a close up photo on the screen. You can see lots of dust on this owl, it's been lying on my window shelf for quite a while. The feathers are of a duck, I had to cut them a bit so they look like 'ears' of an owl (actually those are not ears that some owls have but only feathers). I used acrylic colors and you can see well that my hand was shaking (probably I eat too many sweets) while I was drawing circles for the eyes.