A Drama on the Sunflower Field
Season of blossoming tiny suns
I saw this field from the road while visiting my parents in my native city, Kryvyi Rih. Since it wasn’t far, I decided to go there on my bicycle.
I reached the field quickly, but it appeared covered with bushes from all sides. Finally, I found one small passage. The sunflowers stood against the sun there. My mini-trip looked spoiled.
The towers on the horizon belong to iron ore mines and are typical of the landscapes of Kryvyi Rih. By the way, who said that sunflowers follow the sun? They were probably tired of the heat as well and decided to turn away.
I started to search for bees on the flowers. At least, they could diversify the situation. It wasn’t a problem; I noticed a bee on the nearest sunflower and carefully approached it. But something was wrong. The bee hung immovably.
Yes, it was definitely dead.
When I touched the plant, I understood the reason. A spider appeared from the other side to defend its prey. It was possibly Latrodectus pallidus, a species that catches insects on different flowers.
Although I’m on the bees’ side in this war, I didn’t harm the spider. It’s not his fault that nature created him this way. It has only instincts to kill but not malicious intent. Unlike people have.
Moreover, there were many other flowers with busy, alive bees. They were so distracted with their work that I could turn flowers to catch better lighting and more comfortable perspectives.
Has any bee shown its tongue to you before? So, it does this now:)
A Xylocopa valga flew there, too, but it was much more careful, so I took only one frame.
Although it is a clever and helpful insect, it looks scary.
And everybody knows ladybug.
On the other side of the road, a wheat field was located. Although farmers had gathered the harvest, the field kept the canonical colors, blue and yellow. It is the natural representation of the Ukrainian flag.
Farming is a considerable part of our reality. This is hard work, but these farmers harvested grain in time. My native city is 70 km from the warfare, but not everybody is so happy. This year, there were many cases when Russians deliberately burned fields closer to the frontline or attacked farm technics with FPV drones. This is my daily reminder that Russia is a terrorist state.
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