What on earth...

... is wrong with people. Zapped through tv programm and saw a child´s head cut off (Let me in, ZDF neo). Don´t understand why there´s violence on telly everywhere, I´m endlessly grateful to live in a place where I don´t (rarely) have to encounter it in real life.

EOS D7 or D60...

...that´s the question after my beloved DSLR (Canon EOS D40) has finally quit service.

Game over...

... just realized that my old website is gone for good now and not even accessible via the wayback machine anymore.

At one point I put a lot of time & energy into that page ... and then life happened and things changed.

"There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven. A time to give birth and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.…"

Ecclesiates 3:1-11

( One of my early memories from school: finding Bible Verses by their number as fast as possible- completely useless but I really liked it. )

Making that site was a good occupation at the time, I learned a lot about computers (even some html), the net, photography and got into contact with a lot of people.

It´s  also good that I stopped doing it and left one of my private Universes, I guess one could call it a "subculture".

The site was mainly about pet rats but also about other things like my aquariums and a bit about conservation. Just came across this link on the WDR (!), very nice :

Eine Biologie Studentin konnte im Zoo der britischen Insel Jersey ein Nasenbär-Rudel über längere Zeit beobachten. Was sie über die Tiere gelernt hat und ihr tollen Fotos findest du auf dieser Internetseite

Got a lot of self-affirmation from that site at the time, which was great. Some parts of it I would still like today, others maybe not.Guess the same applies to this blog but this is a lot less time- and energy consuming by comparison.

So, a very belated goodbye to that site and chapter of my life.

So many faces in and out of my life
Some will last
Some will be just now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again

Did I mention I love Billy Joel songs?  Ever since teenage days, some things don´t change :).

holidays almost over...

...could easily do a few days more. caught a cold today :(

Talking shop...

...eating fantastic food, meeting new and old friends.

Caterpillar statistics, Butterfly house Emsbueren

Caterpillar stats, Butterfly house Emsbueren:

- Caligo (memnon and/or eurilochus) on Musa and Canna indica
- Hypolimnas bolina on Hibiscus moscheutus
- Heliconius hecale (and probably other heliconids) on Passiflora violaceae and Passiflora gracilis
- Danaus plexippus on Asclepias currassavica
- Heraclides thoas on Citrus sp.
- Morpho peleides on Arachis and Wisteria. Might ty to switch them to Trifolium...

Waiting for Parides on one of the Aristolochias (durior, macrophylla, gigantea and elegans)

Yup, had to show off :).
I knew none of this a year year ago and had to look nothing up for posting this.
It´s has been and still is a steep learning curve.

Just to prove that I´m really into the new job even if I miss the old one :).

 

And now to something completely different.

No butterflies in this post!

I´m STILL missing my old job. Well, some parts of it - others I can very happily live without.

It´s really weird but I loved doing nightshifts and long hours and being able to concentrate 100% on one thing only for a couple of weeks without feeling guilty or feeling like I´m missing out on something else.
"Mustn´t grumble" * and got absolutely no reason or right to, I know - but it still gives me a sense of loss.

* Speaking of which, I think in one aspect I would fit in with the Brits:

Given the recent research on the benefits of pessimism, maybe the Brits have it right — maybe the rest of the world should take a page out of the “mustn’t grumble” manifesto. Perhaps cultivating, as Kate Fox puts it in Watching the English, “a sense of passive, resigned acceptance, an acknowledgement that things are bound to go wrong, that life is full of little irritations and difficulties and that one must simply put up with it,” does wonders for your mental health. After all,

Nothing ever works properly, something always goes wrong, and on top of that it’s bound to rain. To the English, these are established, incontrovertible facts; they are on par with the laws of physics.

Quote from the last word on nothing .

Papenburg Panorama

playing around with my cam, an antique russian fisheye lens, a tripod and photoimpact

I´m afraid...

...I´ve become slightly obsessed with butterfly stuff.
Got really exited when I discovered Angelonia flowers in a nearby garden centre.

Hope the butterflies will like it :).

Spent at least 5 hrs looking for butterfly plants all over the internet yesterday.

photo workshop

...at Emsflower on Saturday. Very good teacher: Roland Artur Berg (http://www.fotografie-berg.de) .
Lots of space for improvement, still don´t use all the possibilities of my (by now rather old) camera.

Rups..

as the dutch say. We´ve finally got Morpho offspring on the Wisteria and the Parides iphidamas are pupating.

Whenever I´m a lazy git...

...I try to remember this :) .

Actually really like my work right now feels like I´m getting the best of two worlds.
I guess it will / cannot last because planningwise it would be "a little bit" complicated,  but I´ll enjoy it how long it lasts and look very much forward to new stuff anyway :).

Leszek i pustułek

Leszek & pustułek  (Proszę wybaczyć mój słaby polski :) ! )
Leszek & Turmfalkenweibchen
Leszek & female kestrel
Leszek &  vrouwelijke torenvalk
Leszek &  falco tinnunculus (0,1)

Don´t know why everybody who has not studied biology seems to hate the "latin" species names, it´s so much easier and precise to use them.

Leszek*  caught a female kestrel today in one of the greenhouses and was kind enough to show it to me before he released it.
After some newts, a lizard (still unsure about the species...it came with the potsoil), a rhinozeros beetle, various songbirds, toads and frogs galore this was an interesting & unexpected new addition to the collection at my workplace.

* a colleague of mine, together we´ve been through thick and thin in the last years (and no, this is no english for runaways, apparently that´s a real english expression)

one very hungry caterpillar...

I´ve never really been into botany, I get interested in  plants mostly/only when they can be eaten by animals and in my mind I classify everything as browse and non browse.
The first time I really learned about native "weeds" was when I kept two guinea pigs who lived exquisitely on herbs I collected for them.
So now, when visiting botanical gardens I tend to look for butterfly host plants mainly, trying to pinch some shoots of passiflora, aristolochia or cestrum.

A colleague of mine recently found an Aristolochia for sale in a garden centre and I planted it in our greenhouse in Papenburg. Some pipvine swallowtails laid there eggs on it and last time I visited there where a couple of goodlooking caterpillars munching away. as the plant ist too small for them yet I took them home and atred to search for a dutchmens pipe vine - without success. Until another colleague discovered one in our outside show-garden.
It´s so cool to have colleagues like that ! :)

Gave some leaves to the caterpillars and they started eating right away.
So, that´s the perfect way for a zoologist to identify a plant species: just find a host specific caterpillar and see if it eats it :).
It´s a Parides iphidamas by the way.

special guests...

... Argema mimosae and Morpho achilles.

When  visiting the town I where I studied recently - well it´s zoo and it´s botanical garden to get some Aristolochis shoots - I realized there´s only one, single thing I really miss now,  living in the countryside: a large library, preferably one from a University with a biology department..
Or any library at all, come to that.

sometimes little things...

...make you very happy.
Feeling grateful.

surprise, surprise... more flutterby photos from papenburg

Anteos clorinde on Canna

Caligo caterpillar, hopefully looking for a place to pupate

Littel monster  - caligo caterpillar

Caligo egg

Caligo eurilochus

Heraclides anchisades eggs on Citus

heliconiuus couple mating (the upper one is flying)

Heraclides thoas

Idea leuconoe on Lemon

Heliconius melpomene

Morpho egg. Unfortunately unsuccessfully laid on Spatiphyllum, They don´t seem to like the two wisterias I planted for them. Growing Arachis (Peanut plants) now, in the hope that that´ll work better.

Pupa cingulatum

Siproeta stelenes taking a break on the bridge

Personally...

... I ´d rather be a caterpillar than a butterfly.