Karma Kaminia

I didn't realise until I just checked, but this here blog has existed for 14 years almost to the day (I should have looked a couple of days ago on the 7th). Within that time, I've posted countless images and endless streams of nonsense. Occasionally the blog has lapsed into complete hiatus, sometimes I have a surge of enthusiasm. Regardless, I have used the blogger label function liberally over all of those years.

Ultimately the blog serves one key purpose - for my own reference and recollection. I often flick back through old posts, and sometimes I scan through the labels and remind myself about a species / place / time. It's also not unusual for me to notice a label and have no clue what it refers to until I click it. And that happened again earlier this evening.

"Kaminia"

It was only when I pulled up the posts with this label that I remembered a business trip to Greece back in April 2015. In fact it was the last overseas business trip I made before changing my role from Quality Manager to Manufacturing Manager; visits to other plants have been very few indeed since then. The trip was a week-long activity in one of our plants, referred to as Patras albeit actually a reasonable drive away from the city. Greece is a quirky shape with lots of islands, so to save you Googling here are some maps to give some reference:

Patras a good three hours drive west of Athens (c130 miles). It seems even longer when driving on the wrong side of the road in an unfamiliar hired automatic car ....

Zoomed in a bit, the green dot is Patras (Greece's third largest city and the regional capital of Western Greece, apparently), and the red dot is the large industrial estate where the plant I was working at is.

Zoomed in a bit more again, the red dot is the plant and the cyan dot is where I was staying in the coastal town of - yes - Kaminia. And the yellow dots ...

Whilst I was there for a week, I did manage a couple of quick half-hour or so forays at the yellow dots with the camera with the intention of snapping any odd inverts or birds I saw. One spot was literally some roadside scrub, and one was a pull-in right alongside the coast with some scrub. Neither looked anything like promising, but honestly it was ridiculous how much activity there was despite it being April and there still being snow on the mountains. I had no net or pots of course, but a lot of stuff was easily snapped or coaxed onto the hand to try and get a shot out of the glare of the sun.

I've already posted a number of images from this trip (hence the couple of labelled posts) - a few red and black hemipteran species and a number of weevils. But looking back to my photos I had plenty more that have never been shared. So now is as good a time as any. There are too many for one post, so I'll share a few beetles on this one and some varied inverts another day.

First up, this was literally on the steps of the hotel when I arrived - and it was pretty sizeable too. The shape seems right for Buprestidae, and checking it seems it is perhaps Capnodis tenebricosa.

Here's a couple that look very familiar in terms of shape, and are clearly closely related to our Oedemera nobilis. Some quick Googling brought up likely names for them ....

Oedemera rufofemorata

Oedemera femorata

These two are even more putatively named ....

Tropinota squalida

Omophlus lepturoides

And these two remain unnamed, and are likely to stay that way - there's no imperative to name them anyway, no records or lists awaiting them.

Presume Cerambycid

Presume Cantharid

This last one is actually from the car park of the hotel I stopped at just outside of Athens before flying home.

Opatrum sabulosum

Snow-capped mountains viewed from the plant

Sunset over the sea from the hotel