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During a holiday, a snake fell out of nowhere on Hans’ car
Hans Oerlemans was on holiday in Italy on August 25 when a snake suddenly fell on his car out of nowhere. He asked if I can tell which snake it is from his photos. Unfortunately, foreign snakes are not my area of expertise. Fortunately, I know quite a few experts and I consulted them.
The response I got was that this might be a yellow-green wrath snake. They were not one hundred percent sure, because you cannot see enough details in the photo. The yellow-green tree snake belongs to the family of the horned snakes, more specifically the subfamily Colubrinae. This subfamily also includes a Dutch snake: the smooth snake. This is a non-venomous snake, a protected species, which is mainly found on dry heathlands. You can also encounter them in raised moor areas, open forests and in young plantings on sandy soil.
The yellow-green wrath snake is active during the day, but can also enjoy a sunbath. They can grow up to 1.8 meters long. The menu of this snake includes a wide range of food, mainly small mammals, but also lizards, birds and their young. In addition, amphibians (frogs) and also invertebrates such as beetles and (slugs) snails.
After mating, the females deposit their eggs under tree stumps or large stones. The young snakes hatch after about six to eight weeks. They are then a maximum of 25 centimeters. You mainly encounter this species in Italy and southern France.
Butterfly photographed in Montafon in Austria
On August 25, Bert Vervoort had photographed a butterfly that he had never seen before in Montafon, Austria. His question is, which one is it? I think it is the moth with the beautiful name big bear. This moth belongs to the large family of spider owls, and the subfamily of bear butterflies. The well-known scallop butterfly also belongs to this subfamily.
You can encounter the adult big bear from the beginning of June. They are true moths that fly late at night and then look for nectar. The caterpillars, on the other hand, eat everything. To start with, nettle, but also dandelions, plantain species, ox tongue and sorrel species.
In humid areas this is water sorrel. But if all those plants mentioned are not sufficiently present, they eat the leaves of all kinds of plants and shrubs. If the caterpillars are disturbed, they often roll up in a spiral. They are very hairy caterpillars – hence the name bear butterflies – that move quite quickly and are often poisonous. The behavior of the great bear moth is very special.
When disturbed they show their brightly colored hind wings, see photo above. In addition, in the event of a major disturbance, they squirt a clear yellow fluid from two glands just behind the head.
Is this a rare wood wasp?
Leon Smolders came across a parasitic wasp on August 26. He thought of a special parasitic wasp called tremex fuscicornis. My question is whether this is correct. I indeed agree with him. He also wants to know whether this special parasitic wasp/wood wasp has a Dutch name.
According to reports, this tremex fuscicornis does not really have a Dutch name yet, but in an article I came across the name large wood wasp and also the name birch sword wasp.
We officially call this wasp species wood wasps, which deserves explanation. We call this wood wasps because the females of this special type of parasitic wasps have a long drill (laying tube) with which they drill a hole in the wood to deposit their eggs in prey larvae. After the eggs of those wood wasps hatch, they eat the larvae of those prey animals from the inside.
Finally, it is very nice that many of these new species are coming to our country because we are getting more and more real forests and especially because we are accepting more and more dead wood. Dead wood is part of a real living forest. Fifty percent of biodiversity is due to dead wood. Would you like to read more about this large wood wasp, then take a look at this link.
There were eggs in a butterfly bush and also hatched eggs
Gwendolyn took a photo in her garden on August 23. She saw something there on a butterfly bush. At first she thought she saw eggs. But when she looked further, she saw that the eggs had hatched. The larvae of the southern green shield bug had hatched from the eggs. Since bugs do not undergo complete metamorphosis, we do not call the animals that hatch from the eggs larvae, but nymphs.
In the southern green shield bug, these animals look like a bug, but not at all like the adult southern green shield bug. Its basic color is a green color, see photo.
These bugs belong to the invasive species. They originally belong in Africa. Due to climate change, these bugs have also ended up in the Netherlands and many parts of Europe. The first report of the southern green shield bug here was made in 2006. The menu of these animals includes plants, they feed on plant juices. They have a preference for young plant parts, fruits and growing points.
They have a snout and with that snout they pierce the plants and at the same time introduce poisonous saliva into the plant. The damage that then occurs causes the plant to discolour, producing deformed fruits and wilted shoots. In short: not good if you have plants that you want to harvest.
Seen it in my garden for several years, what is it?
Jacqueline van Boven has been seeing a certain organism in her garden for several years, again on April 21 this year. She wants to know what she’s dealing with. In the photo you see a branch with all kinds of orange-like sacs on it. We are dealing here with a fungus with the wonderful name hawthorn-juniper rust.
This specific fungus is one of the many rusts, of which approximately seven thousand species are known. Hundreds of them are known in our country and all these organisms belong to the kingdom of fungi. There are two plant names in the name of the hawthorn-juniper rust. That’s because the fungus needs both host plants to complete its life cycle.
The fertile parts of this fungus occur on the leaves of the hawthorn. These fertile parts consist of two separate parts: one part at the top and one part at the bottom of the leaves. Would you like to know more about that? see this link
In addition to the hawthorn, the rowan, the American serviceberry, the chokeberry, pear and quince are alternative host plants. What then does the juniper do in this story? The juniper berry also plays an important role in this fungus, because it is the winter host plant. The spores that the hawthorn-juniper rust fungus sends into the air float to juniper trees and they survive the winter on those trees. In the spring, the fungus produces spores on the juniper that then float to the hawthorn or the other trees mentioned above, where they complete the life cycle of the hawthorn-juniper rust fungus.
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Why rain will not save us from the drought – Nieuwsuur
You may be thinking: has the Netherlands dried up? Now that it is autumn, it is raining again, isn’t it? But the rainfall deficit in our country is still enormous. The exceptionally dry summers of recent years naturally contribute to this, but the dehydration in the Netherlands is mainly a conscious political choice. Draining water into the sea has been policy for decades.