Small insects and big catfish in the garden


Common door snail

Today, first along the railroad.

Blackberries, and common blue and meadow brown butterflies still there.

Then, the botanical gardens.

A biologist explains on, mainly small, animals, there.

First, many small snails: common door snail. They eat lichen, so they don’t harm flowers.

There are also sowbugs, isopods, with some new-born young. They lay their eggs in fluid similar to sea water: they are crustaceans, whose ancestors lived in the sea.

Then, a bigger snail species: brown garden snail.

And a centipede: Lithobius forficatus, garden centipede. It eats isopods, worms, etc. Later, another, bigger, centipede species.

Under stones, a small black ant nest. Winged males and many pupae among them.

We see a smooth newt: there are hundreds of them in the botanical gardens. Also many young toads, just one centimetre in size, jumping.

In the chestnut trees live many horse-chestnut leaf-miners; small moths.

Then we go to the hothouses.

Ten tropical ant species live there, which came along with tropical plants; as did jumping spiders.

In the Victoria amazonica hothouse waters live many small tropical fish. And also a metre long South American catfish.

African cichlids also used to live there. However, they had to be taken away, as they ate the Victoria amazonica plants.

Sparrowhawk and buzzard


Sparrowhawk flyingToday, from the city to the villlage.

Eurasian reed-warbler singing. Great cormorant flying overhead.

Later, in the nature reserve: a buzzard. Still later; a sparrowhawk, a regular nesting species here.

Hello world!


Welcome to dearkitty at Blogsome. This is the first post. This is a backup blog to Dear Kitty blog at ModBlog.

An email has been sent giving details how to login to the administration section.

From there you can change the design by clicking on the tab MANAGE and then click on the tab THEMES. If you have any questions ask them in the forum.

UPDATE 16 October 2006: ModBlog seems to be gone forever.

UPDATE 29 December 2011: Blogsome will probably be gone soon as well. So, we are at WordPress now, at my WordPress blog there.