I went hiking in the Andes again.

No, I wasn't. I just used Photoshop.🤪

More specifically, the generative AI fill of the latest beta. In the past, you had to laboriously select the motif, research the right background image, consider copyrights, insert it, edit the edges and make many adjustments. Today, all you need is a click and a text prompt. What do you think? 🤔

Now anyone can fake just about anything with ease. Admittedly, a closer look reveals a few discrepancies, but only a few look closely. Influencers no longer need to travel and dating profiles can be so much more interesting! On the other hand, if you want to be creative, a lot of work is saved and you can invest more time in other things. Also, almost everyone is already changing their "landscape" anyway, which others would call a beautiful face (wrinkles are natural and beautiful!).😉

Image 1 was created with the input "Mountain hike in the Andes", Image 2 "Landscape of the 2009 film Land of the Lost", Image 3 "Amazon River" and Image 4 is the original (in my neighborhood).

Authenticity is important to me, which is why I always mention content manipulation or generated representations. Except for the Easter eggs, of course, but nobody discovers them anyway.😄

Maybe I should devote myself more to classical painting again. It's not that easy to fake and you still have to do something.👨‍🎨

Happy Pentecost weekend!😊✨
I'm always in the sunshine 😜😋
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Box tree moth,
Cydalima perspectalis

Native to Asia, it has been invading Europe since the 2000s and increasingly the United States in recent years. It has no natural enemies in Europe and has already contributed to the loss of entire forest areas. The caterpillars are poisonous. In its homeland in Asia, the Asian hornet is a natural predator. Although the Asian hornet is also spreading more and more in Europe, this is also a problem, because the Asian hornet also hunts bees and the European bees are not as defensive as the Asian bees.

The appearance and disappearance of individual species can have far-reaching consequences not only for wildlife but also for human livelihoods.

Birds are singing, people are sleeping. The air smells of meadow. Sunday morning sunrise.

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Walking in the sunshine 🌞

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Well, it smelled as expected.

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This little beauty is a mirid bug (Deraeocoris ruber)🤠🐞

They inhabit forests, but occur mainly on sunny forest edges and open areas.🌳🌞

Mirid bugs prey on various small arthropods such as caterpillars, but particularly aphids.🌿🐛
The prey is killed and sucked out by a sting that is also painful for humans.🧃😋

But that rarely happens.😄

The species is useful and harmless.🤗 However, nature is full of phenomena. In Germany, 2016, a related species (Psallus varians) - within the same family (Miridae) - spontaneously developed an increased appetite for blood and attacked humans and animals in very large numbers.😵🩸🌳

The mirid bug is widespread in almost all of Europe (except the far north and few islands in the Mediterranean and Atlantic) - you find it in North Africa - and further east to the Caucasus. It has been introduced in some areas of North and South America.🌍🌎

Behind me you can see the presumed remains of Nürings Castle. Around 1100, the Counts of Nürings built a residence on the mountain. After the male line died out in 1171, the county of Nürings was first taken over by the Lords of Münzenberg and then by the Lords of Bolanden. In 1233, after a division of the family property, Philipp von Bolanden called himself "von Falkenstein". This new Falkenstein line removed the remains of Nürings Castle and built New Falkenstein Castle right next to it.

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The Falkenstein Castle was inhabited from the 13th to the end of the 18th century.🏰 However, after the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648) it already lost its importance, fell into disrepair and was only partially habitable.

Not much is left of the castle. The demolition was only stopped in 1842, the entrance gate is a reconstruction dating back to that period. The square bergfried dates from the 14th century with its round turret from the 15th century and is 18 meters high.

The view is very nice, because the small town of Falkenstein looks as idyllic as the intro of a German soap opera from the 80s and 90s.😆📺

A small group of ibexes lived on the mountain until about the 1980s. They were sent from the nearby Opel Zoo in Kronberg.🐏

I didn't stay long there and hiked a bit through the forest.😊

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Another blink of the sloth's eye
and the flowers bloom again.

🦋 Lasiommata megera, the "wall"
🐝 Bombus hortorum, the "garden bumblebee"
🏰 at the Falkenstein Castle
🌞 last summer

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