Philosophical Saturday night post: My lockdown sanity-saver project was to finally catalogue all the photos of creatures I've found in my garden. My goal was to record one photo of each species and only log it if it could be definitely identified. I started it, realised it was quite a lot of photos and started to wonder just how many creatures actually used our garden. As a background we started with a patch of bare clay, carved out of an over-grazed Welsh hill farm 12 years ago and in the middle of a new housing estate. The plot of land is about 26m long, 14m wide at the front tapering to 10m wide at the back and that includes where we built the house and driveway. I've been taking a lot more photos this year while trying to be more observant and today I recorded the 250th species photo (which also happened to be the 20th species of hoverfly, Scaeva selenitica) and I've still got 50-60 photos of unidentified creatures to work through at some point and yes vine weevils are included. I haven't even started on things like slugs and worms or anything too small or hidden, I haven't looked in the pond yet or bothered to consider plant life. I guess what I'm getting at is this is a lot of life sharing a small and very new garden. I see posts from people worried that they've seen a strange bug and want to know how to get rid of it, posts about what is the best pesticide (and don't even get me started on plastic grass) but I'm always glad to come back to this thread and see people appreciate the diversity of life in our gardens. Anyway this is Scaeva selenitica, the Yellow-clubbed Hoverfly, on one of my bolted radish plants that I don't remove because the pollinators love the flowers and the sparrows and mice love the seeds, but Scaeva selenitica does not love having its picture taken and this is the first time I've even got within two metres of it.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
A most uplifting post, @wild edges , thanks for that!
Ever since I've been interested in nature and macrophotography I've found that the latter is a great way "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower".
@BrixtonGardener It's a thistle. I was just in my local park and though there are wildy areas, it was noticeable just how much more insect life is audible and visible in my garden, just because there is so much more in flower. I found a patch of thistle and ragwort, but that was pretty much it.
I think of these as Ginger Bees. What are they really? Tree bumbles seem ginger, but not the same.
My first real macro lens is in the post and I cannot wait. Thanks to those who advised on the purchase. x
The lady in her fox fur muffler and Bono sunglasses:
(on Canon Went; linaria).
I like her feet. It looks like she is wearing red nail polish.
The light on her stained glass wings.
I love watching them wiggle in to the dragons' mouth. They sometimes get stuck and have do a butt reverse in an awkward heaving-waggle.
@Fire , is it a common carder? I do struggle with bee id though.
I got into spotting bugs in my garden last year after getting a new camera. Some days I get great results, other days the camera just doesn't seem to want to focus. Here's a few from today though (gatekeeper, hoverfly I've yet to id, and random bumblebee).
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Wasp spider and some doer of grass hopper lounging in a Platycodon flower.
Yours is stunning! Love the saturation. What plant is that?