Ladybirds with attitude
Sanity will return tomorrow. I promise.

A few days ago I posted an image of an immature capsid bug. Here’s a shot from last year of one all grown up, surveying the garden kingdom.
As the deadline for my dissertation inexorably draws nearer, and with school holidays approaching even faster, I am having to put photography on the back burner, again. But it is bug season! Not fair! I can’t ignore all that gorgeous mini-beast action in my garden completely. So here are a few shots grabbed in illicit moments away from my studies.
These capsid bugs normally hang out on oak trees. Luckily, my neighbour has a whopper of an oak tree so we get a lot of extra bug action. Oak trees rock.
This fly is so small I can’t make out the detail until I grab a macro shot and view it at native resolution on my desktop. It’s too small even for my insect field guide, so I can offer no ID. Â Do step up if you know what it is!
This might be a moth. It too is very small, but rather cute, in my opinion.
I have a few more shots to share but I am going to have to be strict with myself about spending time on-line for the next few weeks. So sorry if I don’t manage to visit your site for a while. But, come September, there will be no stopping me!
On Tuesday, I waxed eloquent, well enthusiastic at least, about my new toy, the Fuji X-E1, but there is one thing it can’t do: decent macros of the very smallest critters in my garden. There my DSLR and macro lens rule supreme. This is an immature capsid bug showing off its gravity defying skills on a lavender leaf.
A shot from last year of a rosemary beetle. Â These relatively recent arrivals in the UK may be pretty but they wreak havoc in the garden, especially the herb border. Â One shouldn’t anthropomorphise but I can’t help interpreting this one’s expression as more belligerent than guilty. Â Perhaps it is thinking of Princess Anne’s famous riposte:
You are a pest, by the very nature of that camera in your hand.Â