This short story about a distant summer morning in the mountains about 100 kilometers from where I live starts with a pretty unusual shot.
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The small, juvenile Green lizard (Lacerta viridis) and a pretty large adult Rattle grasshopper (Psophus stridulus) near to each other. Although it looks like they stayed like that forever, because the scene is fixed on the photograph, in reality this was just a short elusive moment. I was photographing the sleepy lizard, in a relatively cold conditions of the early morning ... when the grasshopper jumped in the frame ... they stayed like that for a fragment of time, and I was lucky to push the button in the right moment ... a moment that I didn't predict.
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It was still dark when I left my house to drive along the relatively empty highway, the fastest route to reach the nearest mountains on the northern border of this region called Istra ... and when I arrived, at dawn, I spent the first few hours around the big flowers of the Woolly thistle (Cirsium eriophorum). The European green lizard is common in my seaside area just like it is in these mountains ... but this kind of thistle ...
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... doesn't grow in my neighborhood.
The Rattle grasshoppers are also exotic from my point of view ...
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... I encounter them only every few years ... when I visit this northern area ...
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... in the right season.
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This large and beautiful butterfly, Minois dryas ... is another species that I really see ... it's quite common from the central part of the peninsula northwards ... but you can't see them in my, most southern area.
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This vividly green grasshopper is another exotic, northern species.
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Can't tell you much about these grasshoppers ...
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... saw them only a few times ... long ago.
This is a shot of the setting ... taken on some other occasion ... but also long ago.
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I didn't think about this back then, only today while preparing these old photographs ... I mean, is interesting how the black eyelids of this small lizard create an illusion that hi's observing its surroundings while sleeping.
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And that's it ... it was an amazing morning ... it happened in 2007 ... as always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.