Frustrating photo of the week: I chased a small pearl-bordered fritillary (normal sized small pearl-bordered fritillary not a small pearl-bordered fritillary... yeah I know) around the garden but trying to get insects to sit still for two seconds in this heat is impossible. Finally got a half decent photo of it feeding with a nice dark background but my slovenly weeding ruined the shot with the dead material at the top, and the wing is a bit too out of focus Still a lovely creature to have visit the garden though
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I've been practicing my cheating I didn't want to lose too much of the flower so I did some virtual weeding instead. I'm sure I'd get a slapped wrist in some circles but for my own purposes it makes me feel a lot better.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
There won't be many gardeners who like aphids but I'm always interested to see which species turn up in the garden. The top one is your bog standard rose aphid. I don't grow roses but they love teasels and I have plenty of those. The bottom one is a yarrow aphid taking advantage of my explosion of yarrow plants this year. The sparrows are having an absolute feast on both of them.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Another frustrating photoshoot. I wanted to show this tiny nettle aphid surrounded by vicious nettle spines but can't quite get the lighting to work. Also I got stung a lot
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Those aphid photos are excellent, well-done @wild edges
In the past years I've came back empty-handed and disgusted from several "insect safaris" field trips in the surrounding countryside. As a result, since I no longer go to watch the insects, they come to visit me in my garden. When I saw this magnificent "dragonfly" still asleep on a fern specimen on my fern wall, I couldn't believe my eyes. A nice specimen of Anax imperator (female).
It was a good day for creepy crawly photos here. Not too bright and cool enough that the bugs stayed still for a bit longer. This bee landed on my left hand as I was taking photos. With this lens I can just about use the focus ring with the same hand as the camera now.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I also added this bee to the species list for my garden. I haven't been able to work out what it is just that I haven't seen it before, the long thin jaws are pretty distinctive though. It's an erigeron karvinskianus flower for scale.
I rescued this fly from the greenhouse.
and found this amazing green spider on my sambucus nigra
and this lovely silver-Y moth was in the other greenhouse.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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When I saw this magnificent "dragonfly" still asleep on a fern specimen on my fern wall, I couldn't believe my eyes. A nice specimen of Anax imperator (female).