Other winged creatures...

While out for a walk with Silvia, Marcela and Tudor at Turda's Keys today (we walked the around and over the right hand part of it),

we found several winged creatures apart from birds. The highlight for all of us was this Noctule Bat.

Closely followed by this preying Mantis.

Other sightings included this very well camouflaged Moth,

several species of butterfly, including Red Admiral, Clouded Yellow, Danube Clouded Yellow and a couple of others that we couldn't identify. Then there was this pretty cool looking spider (I think a Garden Spider), which was only about the size of a 5p coin, but still didn't look like he wanted to be messed with!!

(pic taken by Silvia)

Urban hoodies...

Fortunately not the hooded chavs we get back in the UK. These guys are Hooded Crows, similar to the Carrion Crows that you usually seen on England and Wales, but they look a lot cooler! At the moment in Cluj, it seems like we have the whole  of the Romania population roosting at night in the city. Thousands of them gather at night along with larger numbers of Rooks and Jackdaws. It's quite a spectacle!!

During the day there are far fewer around (as most of them travel quite a long way to go and feed), but still plenty enough to see and photograph. The river is always a favored spot for them

A very slow worm...

I found this little (only about 10 cm long) chap today, on a cold damp shaded bit of clay/mud hardly moving. So I picked him and moved him to a patch where the sun was shining.

Within minutes he seemed to perk up, and was soon searching for a meal amongst the leaf litter.

It's was nice to finally find one alive, as unfortunately the other two I found the week were road casualties!! 

Don't they know it's nearly winter...

After our  first frost here a few days ago, and a very little snow fall, I'm surprised that I keep seeing butterflies! Most of them have been Red Admirals and Small Whites, but I have also managed to pick out 1 Clouded Yellow,

and this one, which is a female Brown Hairstreak (thanks to guys who identified this one for me).

Hide and seek...

While out exploring the woods behind the flat again, I heard a very strange noise coming towards me. Not long after, a huge Woodpecker flew over my head and landed in the trees in front of me. Sure enough it was a Black Woodpecker (Europe's largest Woodpecker - roughly the size of a Crow!!). At first he would only take a quick look at me, and then hide behind the tree! This continued for a while.

But eventually he got used to me being there, and decided to come over and introduce himself.

This bird looks quite scruffy, because he's molting his feathers. This is something birds do every year. From this picture though, I can tell that it's a male - the red on the crown covers the whole of the head (only the back half is red on a female), and if you look at the primary feathers on his wing, at least one of them is browner in colour (this one hasn't been molted). Juvenile feathers are a lot duller/browner in colour in Black Woodpeckers.

Forest fire...

Well not quite, but this little gem - a Firecrest deserves a punchy title. I've only seen a handful of these in the UK, so I was very pleased to find some where I'm staying at the moment in Cluj.

Despite being around 9 cm in length and weighing little more than s 20 pence piece (around 6 g), these guys will travel long distances to avoid the cold weather.