S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 60. (Budapest, 1999)

The first visiting period of two weeks from the 8th to the 20th of July in the year of 1996 was rather wet, scarcely a day passed without rain. Since sawflies are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature we made though rather unsatisfactory collectings of these insects. The short trips up on the very steep hill-sides around the administrative station of the Biosphere Reserve, near Kostilevka (Berlebán or Barnabás), and in the forested mountains around the town of Rakhiv resulted only a meagre amount of specimens. In one day we were taken by a lorry to the mountain of Hoverla but had no opportunity to collect even for a short period of time, because after unloading we took our knapsacks and bags and trotted along a narrow mountain footpath, at a height of about 1800-1900 metres, first climbing up a ragged ridge, then descending on a subalpine meadow, which lasted for the best part of six hours to reach before nightfall a Training Station on the other side of the mountain. The three days spent there passed by watching the sky to clear up and waiting for the dew or the dripping vegetation to dry. But there was no mercy, rain came down again and again. So on the third morning we climbed into a car and were taken to Vorochta, where we took a train back to Rakhiv. The weather in the two weeks from the 9th to the 21st of June in 1997 was more benign to us. After reaching Rakhiv we made some collectings around the administrative station of the Biosphere Reserve. On the third day we were transported to the tourist house erected within the strictly protected nature conservation area (tvt. - természetvédelmi terület) which extends over the Carpathians. The other half of this strictly protected area, over the Carpathians, actually on the eastern slopes of the mountain range is called a national park. Our basis was at the height of some 700 metres, where we spent a whole week. Near the house the ice-cold mountain brook, named Hoverla, was rushing down providing water to drink and also to wash. When the weather was good we made longer trips lasting for several hours, when it was sombre we just started out into the forest around us. The different biotopes yielded various sawfly species. This time a fairly long series of some interesting species was collected. The undisturbed forest rewarded our efforts, at times, with rare species. It was especially good to collect a species described originally as a variety by Niezabitowski in 1898: Taxonus alboscutellatus. It is considered as a rare species, so far collected only in the Carpathians. In a rather wet and cool morning We singled one specimen of a female. The place where it was found soon turned out to its habitat, so in the matter of a few hours almost a dozen specimens of both sexes were secured. The adults do not really fly long distances, simply just crawl from one leaf to the other, or hop down, seldom take to the wing, and if they do so just for very short distances. The habitat where they were encountered was shady and dim, moist, rather cool, the vegetation was dense comprising mostly various, tall, soft-stemmed plants, like Petasites intertwined with blackberry (Rubus fruticosus), an alder or willow sapling here or there. Several specimens of Strombocews delicatulus (Fallén, 1808) were captured on or in the close vicinity of its food-plants: Athyrium filix-femina, Dryopteris filix-mas, Polypodium vulgare. Up on a small mountain field of the Menchil (1500 m) many fully grown Veratrum album stocks were about. After closely inspecting the plant, almost every one of them had at least one specimen of Veratra nodicornis (Konow, 1886) hiding or lasily crawling over the large surface of the leaf. A nice long series of this sawfly species was secured. When the sun was out specimens of Cephalcia erythrogastra Hartig, 1837, a pine pest, were flitting about, trying to reach in the yet cool forenoon the lower branches of