Natural History Photographs


Valle d'Aosta, Italy
Ville sur Sarre
26, 28 July & 7 August 2018

A series of marked hiking tracks crosses Ville sur Sarre, and so I could quickly leave the road and walk into the fields. The tracks meander through agriculural fields, hedges, little snippets of uncultivated land, and forest. The track I followed on various days quickly ascends the mountain slope, to end after a km or so onto a dirt road. The dirt road winds through forrest to end at a tarmac road. From the dirt road, some tracks lead to scraps of used land. I walked the dirt road a couple of times, and explored the side tracks, too. On the 28th I walked back to Ville sur Sarre along the dirt road after some moderate rainfall. Many insects hide for the rain, and so you have to carefully search for insects. Because of this, you sometimes find species that you might normally overlook. This way I found a female of Acrocera sanguinea, one of those flies dipterologists can get pretty excited about (fun fact: their larvae parasitize on spiders!). So despite the rain this wasn't a lost day.

Lonicera xylosteum Holopogon nigripennis
Argynnis paphia
f. valesina

Erebia ligea
Hyponephele
lycaon


Tremulicerus tremulae Apoderus coryli


Acrocera sanguinea


Lithosia quadra


Betula spec. with mines of Lyonetia clerkella


Prunus spec. with mines of Lyonetia clerkella


Stauropus fagi


Fraxinus excelsior
with mines of Caloptilia cuculipennella
Taraxacum spec.
with mines of Cystiphora taraxi
Leptoglossus
occidentalis

Satyrus ferula


Allium oleraceum Volucella pellucens


Sceliphron caementarium


Holopogon nigripennis Eilema lurideola


Scythris scopolella Oedipoda germanica