TreeHugger and Frikosal deep into mother earth

Yes, Frikosal, it is me. I'm TreeHugger, the annoying bug that had been placing comments into your fantastic blog.

Three months ago I tripped over your blog, and since then I discovered a rich world of insects and birds. I recovered my lost passion for photography. I learned how to make blogs and resulting to that I slept less hours. All this thanks to you.

I'm sorry to break the mystery. I'm a fan of Lost, the TV show. There are lots of unknowns and mysteries on that show, and every single time that a mystery is revealed I got deceived, because our imagination is far greater than any explicit reality. Now your imagination will stop guessing who the hell is TreeHugger and most likely will be deceived. But I had to tell you. When I saw you the other day and I had to put my hypocritical mask, that left me with a bitter taste and the determination to stop the game.

Spidergreen on duty

(click on image to enlarge)

Spiders are fascinating, here it comes Spidergreen descending from his net.

Spidergreen was peacefully taking a sun bath on his nice penthouse on top of an attractive Dacy. Spidergreen was happy because it was sunny, no clouds were showing and a munion of insects were flying around. But our friend did not realize that the most hideous animal on this planet* had spotted him. TreeHugger had a water spray on his left hand and his camera on the right one.

How can be raining? shouted Spidergreen while descending from his net. 'Click', got you! thought TreeHugger.

* Homo Sapiens, the planet predator responsible of the extinction of 800 catalogued species since 1500

Recycling Nespresso coffee capsules

I hope that readers that may show in this blog are aware of recycling importance. The large scale of predation at which we are stressing our planet calls everybody to action. Reducing waste is a personal quest every single one of us must take seriously.

Here it comes my useless proposal: recycle Nespresso's coffee capsules:

All we need, besides owning one of this subsidized Nespresso's coffee machines, is:

• Old Capsules that we have previously opened and cleaned
• A paper filter that we have cut as it is shown in the previous image
• Grind coffee from a trusted source. In my case I love the 'Supreme' brand, 100% Arabic, from a small shop I know.

The secret of my refilling technique consists on wetting the paper filter with water and stick it on the exit nose as shown in previous image. Then I slide a capsule filled with coffee taking care to align the three holes the recycled capsule has with the position were the machine will make the holes again. This is not a must, but enlarges capsule's life. Don't compress much the coffee, this machines don't have the high pressure they should.

E voila, here comes my coffee...

From 250 g of coffee I make 30 doses. This puts the price of my cup of high quality coffee, including filter, in~0,1 EUR.

I drink ~8 cups a week, that means it will take me 12 years to buy Canon's EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM...

Well I guess I need to increase by 12 my coffee consumption so I can save it in a year ;-)

The Mosquito's are still at work

Hello there, in my last post about the Mosquito's I was afraid about how slowly they were carving their tunnel-nest. Tuns out that they have decided to abandon that soil and try better luck in a different nearby terrain.

Good luck my friends, I'll be watching you!

I like my friend "Estif"

Relations with other people had never been easy for me. Some individuals make me feel small when I talk to them. Others put me in defense as I don't trust them. But there are certain individuals that are special. I don't know why but they make me feel comfortable. They understand and care about what I say, I have this feeling of 'connection' that makes conversations and pauses flow spontaneously.

Steve is one of those nice people that makes me comfortable, cheers to you!

A friend told me...

I have a friend that was living a gray life under the stress of day to day work in a polluted city. This friend suddenly found the blog of someone he knew. He got amazed by beautiful images uncovering nature's best hidden face. The power of the text coming with the images was a pleasure to read. So my friend started to comment on that blog using a nick name. In his ignorance started to make ironic comments that pissed the blog's owner. The owner of the blog deleted his comments and my friend got angry to a point to start an e-war.

That made no sense and luckily things moved to positive. Now my friend is addicted to the blog and tries to help with positive comments. My friend loves the 'out of the box' creative mind of the blog owner and feels admiration for his work and personal quests. He is now willing to uncover his real name but has doubts. From one side he will benefit from open conversation with the blog owner, but on the other side, like in good movies, once the 'bad guy' is uncovered the film looses all it's magic mystery and decays.

What would you recommend to my friend? continue with the hypocrite mask or destroy the mystery?

English, the free language of Catalonia

This picture is another more, of many, homage to human stupidity.

Catalonia, which I have in my hart, has two official languages. Catalan, the historical language of the land and Spanish, the language of the whole country.

Spanish, the language of Cervantes, spoken by 500 million homo sapiens in this planet is the third most known language of the world after Mandarin(1051M) and English(980M). I'm proud to be one of those 500 million.

Catalan, the language of Ramon Llull and my ancestors, is spoken by ~12 million homo sapiens . I'm also very proud to be one of those 12.

But we humans can't get read of our heritage. Our genes, once found useful to incorporate a treat that we can put like: "you are like me, you are my friend. You are not like me, you are my enemy".

Some australopithecus descendants living in Catalonia have carved this monument to stupidity. In Sant Miquel d'Ampuries you can find three plaques in memorial of the introduction of olive crops in Catalonia 2500 years ago. One in Catalan, one in Spanish and the last in English.

You can only read the English version, the other two had been vandalized. Destruo, ergo sum.

Sunset looking for Mr. and Ms. Mosquito

Monday I was looking for my beautifull lovers when I had to stop at the sight of this magnificent sunset with Montserrat's mountain at the end.

I won't be able to see them again till next Monday and that pisses me off.

Grrr.

Love is in the air, bee-eater (II)

Today at noon my little couple of bee-eaters gave me a love lesson and proved what I've read: that males of this species hunt insects that then offer to their couples. Now I can assure you that this is true and the sequence of pictures I've posted proves so.

In this web you can listen to the sound of the Merops apiaster

Bad news regarding the nest, the soil may be too hard and since last Friday they haven't carved much, maybe 4 inch. Since I've read that those nests are 3 to 8 feet deep, it would take them 27 days to reach the 3 feet. Too much.

Due to the love they show I'm going to call them Mr and Ms Mosquito.

Bee-eater's nest close to Simplonia

The other day I saw this couple of beautifull blue birds. They were busy up and down. It's spring and this two I'm sure they were in love. -Look what I brought you Honey, a fat 'bombylius major' -mmm, thanks dear.

What took my attention is that they were busy doing something on a sand wall and returning to this top dead branch of a young oak tree. What are they doing? I thought to myself. Maybe the wall is full of insects and they are having a succulent lunch? Well... turn out they were starting to build their love nest.

My big surprise came when watching the blog of a 'flower covered beard hippy' called Marmorlu I found a bird just like mines, and learned that those birds are 'Abejarucos' (bee-eater).

I found the position of this nest very weak to predators and stupid tourists like me (just close to an unpaved road), so I'm going to pray to the god's of birds for this couple and make sure that I will keep you all posted from their evolution.

The yellow fly over the yellow flower

Can a photo be better than other? only for a single viewer at a single instant.

Today, for TreeHugger, this picture from frikosal is the best ever. It has nice separate colors yellow-white-green in excellent composition's geometry. The fly's body and eyes has perfect focus that starts blurring on its rear wing till daisy's rear petals. It's perfect. Then the subject of the image, the fly, its awesome, rich in detail. I love the hair on its body and abdomen, even look at the eyelid, looks like Sofia Loren!

I love when photos have both good layout and a rich content full of interesting details

Congratulations frikosal!!

Mediterranean Gulls

Taking pictures of Gulls I realized about the red spot they have on their peak. Turn out to have a clear Darwinian reason to be, or so think I. Gull chicks are born with the inclination to peck flesh, which sounds a good survival instinct to have. Adult Gulls have a fantastic red Target for their offspring to peck against and beg for food. This urges the fathers to regurgitate and feed the baby.

Another thing I saw is that youth Gulls have black peak and different feather. I also guess it's good not to show the fleshy spot until it's really needed.

I wonder if nature is so smart or I'm being too smart and making mistakes in my ignorance.

-th