Mushroom Week diary, part 4
Text and photos: Urmas Tartes
Translation: Liis
Globose springtail
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The weather delighted the mushroom pickers already in the morning with a cloudless sky and a smiling sun. I decided to behave like a mushroom picker should today and pick the mushroom caps from the ground. Not for putting them into the frying pan or bringing them to the exhibition, however, but to see who might be discovered under the hat.
Of course I met crowds of old friends such as the globose springtails that I have nicknamed the "thorny behinds“. This time I managed to photograph them feeding between the pores of a bolete. The world in miniature turns thrilling!
Springtail
But I also managed to get photos for myself of new species. One of our largest springtails can twirl the ends of its antennae into nice loops. It might be christened the loophorn.
Beetle mite
The most interesting creature I first took for a tiny spider. But the camera objective showed that instead a daring beetle mite had come clambering on the underside of the mushroom cap. I suspect that it wasn’t there for friendly purposes, but rather, it seemed, as a predator. In the time that I photographed it, it didn’t catch anyone however.
For those who want to know the the size of the creatures in the photos, the length of the longest side of the photos is about 7 mm.
When I loaded the photos into my computer later, it turned out that it was a record day with respect to the number of photos. But that is natural: there are more insects than mushrooms. More than two hundred species of mushrooms have already been brought to the Rõuge community centre. The tiny critters coming with the mushrooms haven’t been counted.
Friday, September 10
10:00-19:00 Mushroom exhibition open
13:00 Mushroom excursion for Rõuge Elementary School students
14:00 Dimitri Demjanov’s Mushroom Pot (Culinary Institute of Estonia; head chef of restaurant Gloria),
19:00 CONCERT: Jaanus Nõgisto - Jaak Tuksam
10:00-19:00 Mushroom exhibition open
13:00 Mushroom excursion for Rõuge Elementary School students
14:00 Dimitri Demjanov’s Mushroom Pot (Culinary Institute of Estonia; head chef of restaurant Gloria),
19:00 CONCERT: Jaanus Nõgisto - Jaak Tuksam
Saturday, September 11
10:00-18:00 Mushroom exhibition open, Urmas Tartes’s nature photo programme
12:00 Mushroom preserve competition
10:00-18:00 Mushroom exhibition open, Urmas Tartes’s nature photo programme
12:00 Mushroom preserve competition
Sunday, September 12
10:00-13:00 Mushroom exhibition open
10:00-13:00 Mushroom exhibition open
Organiser of the Mushroom Week is Viitina Loodushariduskeskus (Viitina Nature Education Centre).
See also: www.viitinalhk.ee.
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