The day in the middle

Funny old day, Sunday on a Bank Holiday, neither one thing nor the other, went and did some work on the allotment – need to do a lot more to help Yoke with that.

Then the afternoon was a bit overcast but okay so decided to do a garden safari

Found a few things to photograph, ignored spiders as they were all the usual suspects and, really they are not doing their jobs, flies everywhere and they sit there smug in their webs catching nowt, the only one that I saw with anything in its web was a small hoverfly, I like  them! Happy to say it got away so even that spider was a klutz.

Anyway, a few photos -  

sing along if you know the words

 Yokes Agapanthus flowered, the girls decided this was a stage and each member of the orchestra had a flower each and this was the club singer - ugly bugs ball !

Follow My leader

These are immature shield bugs, pre adult, they were huddled together on a tomato plant leaf till I started to photo them - then they circled out and headed off

Harvestman

The Harvestman, they are closely related to spiders but are not venomous and have a 'single' body poor beastie has lost a leg did not slow it down when it decided to do a bunk, clealry not star material, it was not happy being under the spotlight

herb moth

I call it a herb moth, it has a latin name but not an 'common' name, its appearance is always the same time as the Marjoram flowers. Its tiny but very colourful and nice to see them flitting about the plants

 

Spekled Bush Cricket

 Can you see its ears ? Heres a clue look at the front legs around the knee joint !

who is in there ?

This is a bit strange, we have had a lot of caterpillars on the Nasturtiums - this was one of them that has weaved its web and changed into a crysalid, the strange thing is - thats a yellow Iris leaf in the middle of our pond, so how did it get there?

White tailed Bumblebee on iceplant

 The Iceplant out in the front garden is in flower the bees love it - in previous years it has been covered in Painted Lady butterflies, not a single butterfly this year, but lots of bees!

and a few solitary wasps - this little insect is about 6mm long but has jaws the size of its head - also likes nectar !

Thats about it for today the light has dropped and so has the temperature so all the bugs have left the Ball and gone home to curl up and sleep till the next one 

A Walk around Tondu

Went for a bit of a walk today, the girls were at the cat shelter, http://www.bridgend.cats.org.uk/
They were having an open day and going for a record, the most people dressed up as cats at one time. Seems there is no official record so the nice people at the Guinness Book of Records picked a reasonable number as a break point, dont know yet if they made it or not.

I decided it was a good opportunity for me to take a walk and play with the camers.

So off to Tondu, as it was close after dropping the girls off. It was not a very long walk and the weather was grey mostly but a few nice views and a few photos - flies of all types !

This is a Common Darter, Sympetrum striolatum saw over 50 of them some were quite obliging letting me get fairly close with the macro lens.

After that we had this little fella - and it is a fella !

You can see why they call them Scorpion flies, probably Panorpa communis as that is the most common I believe

More walking and one of my favourite damsels

The Emerald damselfly Lestes sponsa, unusual for damsels as they hold their wings at 45 degrees rather than closed like other damsels. They are larger than most other damsels and a fabulous metalic colour.

Finally on my way back to the car, a fly - a real fly

 Cant say I like them as I dont, but fascinating when you get the detail in a macro shot, There were a lot of them about mainly flying a bit them settling until something came into their area then flew a bit more then settled again, at least they were not biting !




Finally to finish on something nice, there were a few of these about

A fresh bright Peacock butterfly Inachis Io 


In all a nice day with some good fun and a few nice photos