Happy Birthday, indeed!
1 Like
Checking with the list I had, all the “most wanted” lifers are in its description, with current list open for future trips some day.) https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/4358929-To-see-in-Primore-2022-
I had much more lifers from this week, I really liked finding first time observations for the region or for the whole country. List is pretty long of those that are also lifers for me:
#1 for Primor’e
Pallasina barbata
Vespula koreensis
Acalyptus carpini
Capua vulgana
Melanitta americana
Clostera anachoreta
#1 for Russia
Aclypea daurica
Takydromus wolteri
Vespula flaviceps
Pseudoips sylpha
Descoreba simplex
Plagionotus christophi
Xerodes albonotaria
Calliergis ramosula
2 Likes
Yesterday I found a ghost in the garden. A Ghost Slug to be accurate. Selenochlamys ysbryda which was named as a new species found in Wales back in 2008. I think this is being proven to be incorrect now but I’m still really pleased to have found one and just a bit disappointed that it was species number 499 on my garden animal list and not the big 500.
I also had my first Poplar Hawk Moth in the trap last night as well as 7 other new moth species this week.
10 Likes
Mine would be this lovely Little Bronze-Cuckoo (well, perhaps other birds would not describe cuckoos as lovely :P)
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/118153970
3 Likes
This weekend I had some nice ones! First, I saw some Yucatan whiptails, a common but endemic lizard species I hadn’t seen before. Then, as I thought the day was getting boring, I did something I never imagined would be so fun: I just peeked into a storm sewer. I did so because last year I remember hearing and recording a tree frog calling loudly like a car horn (sorry for bad audio quality) inside a storm drain, so I thought I could find our froggy friend. Surprise! I couldn’t find him, but I saw my second lifer, the Brown’s leopard frog, resting happily in there; I mean, they literally have no predators there, they live completely undisturbed. So, I decided to peek into more sewers to see what I could find. There were tons of leopard frogs in the other sewers!!! And also I saw some GIGANTIC water beetles in there.
Then I saw some Odonata lifers, LOTS OF THEM. First, the Caribbean yellowface, a species I’ve ALWAYS wanted to see and had searched for many years unsuccessfully. They were surprisingly abundant this time! I saw other damselflies too, but that species caught a lot my attention, and I really reacted like a little kid when I saw it! I also saw a tiny, bluish dragonfly with a black abdomen tip with a white spot. It was absolutely gorgeous! I’m still not sure what it was, but a nice lifer for sure! And I believe I also saw a metallic pennant (another lifer) flying above a nice little pond, this has also been one of my favorite dragonflies, and although it was flying very fast, I’m pretty sure of my ID because the silhouette matches very well for the species and the color was pretty visible too. And I also saw a Tramea that caught my attention because it was a very bright red, so it could be one of those rare species that live in my area.
Other odonates I saw but weren’t lifers were the red-tailed pennant, an eastern pondhawk, some banded-winged dragonlets, and a red-mantled dragonlet.
And I also saw many cool birds, but none of them lifers, and an Efferia robber fly eating a smaller fly (I think some sort of Palpada). That genus has lots of species and since they are very hard to identify it was very probably a lifer too.
Would you like to know which birds or that would be too long?
Sorry for making this too long, next time I’ll be more practical.
3 Likes
How do you dare to call that ‘‘weed’’? Change it for ‘‘beautiful, gorgeous, and cute wildflower’’ and everything is fine. 
2 Likes
Thanks!
2 Likes
Or is it a garden escape?
1 Like
No it isn’t, but a weed is generally a noxious plant that isn’t at a desired place.
My favorite lifer for the 4th week of May is another moth! (Also, the first Penstemonia moth on iNat for the Rocky Mountain region.) https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/118120307
…
If you’ve never heard of this moth, that’s okay. I heard of it for the first time this morning, after photographing this individual yesterday in Los Alamos.
For starters, Penstemonia is a genus of moths in western North America (presumably including northern Mexico) in the family Sessiidae (clearwing moths). [Quick sidenote: Hemaris clearwing moths are in the hawk moth family, Sphingidae.]
Clearwing moths often resemble wasps and bees in coloration and marking. They have elongate wings, often transparent owing to the lack of scales. Most of the larvae are borers in the limbs, trunks, bark, or roots of trees, shrubs, herbs and vines (like the infamous peach tree borer). Some bore in galls on woody or herbaceous plants. Majority of adults take nectar. [Source: bugguide.net]
What about our Penstemon clearwing?
There are at least 5 species of Penstemonia in North America. Larval feeding is probably limited to Penstemon or closely related plant species in Cheloneae. The larva will be found within a stem [or roots] at crown level and damage appears as a wilting or dieback of individual stems. Pupation is probably in the soil at the base of plants, but there is no description of them. [Source: Colorado State University Extension (colostate.edu)]
2 Likes
Sessiid moths have always been a dream of mine.
I’m gonna cheat and add some old lifers in the middle of this week, I liked seastars, seaweeds, crabs and giant Ligia, but I was mostly impressed by fish, some locals were doing illegal things, but you don’t even need to do that to get fish to eat, anchovies that came too early to cold waters literally jump out of water by hundreds, and when many gather at bays, thousands of black-tailed gulls come to eat them, also japanese halfbeaks, impressive fish, and some unided Gunnels, with code name eels, that too crawl out of water and don’t even plan to die there! Really weird to be at the beach at night. 52 bird lifers too, wow, and those are species only. And need to add Red King Crab to first in Primor’e list.
And as I’m back at boring place, today I got an amazing moth I wanted from the list of unobserved: Scorched Wing
2 Likes
5 lifers are too much for me…
That’s what a faraway region does, still missed like 120 observed! And there can be so many undetected migrants from SE Asia too. I’m planning to go to Kurils from Kamchatka next year or year after that, it’d be a long trip to get both places and costy. Here I don’t get 5 new birds a year, though it’s possible.
2 Likes
Well wait… 52 lifers in a day? Week? Month? Year?
In 8 days.
2 Likes
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
I only get 5 lifers per week if I’m lucky.
2 Likes
Well, you can travel and get tons of lifers, even here in a couple of years (maybe faster, who knows when borders will be opened), so many places with great nature and few observations.)
1 Like
Well, maybe, but I’m supposed to live in the tropics, 
where there’s ‘‘more biodiversity’’.