Sunday 9th September 2018, 3.35pm (day 2,572)
“Skkrrzzz-thttt. Lander to Moonbase Theta. Small crater to negotiate. Fzzztt.”
Or perhaps it’s an aphid on a wet table. You decide.
“Skkrrzzz-thttt. Lander to Moonbase Theta. Small crater to negotiate. Fzzztt.”
Or perhaps it’s an aphid on a wet table. You decide.
It landed on me. We communed for a minute. I took a photo, it flew off but it had done its job.
God, I’m getting grey. Slowly but surely.
With the extinction of pollinating insects being one of the more plausible end-of-the-world scenarios doing the rounds, it’s gratifying that this one has survived the cold snap and sees in our winter-flowering heather some pleasant sustenance. I like how it looks as if its little eyes are closed, though of course that’s not how insect eyes work. Gives it a look of contentment though.
Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to an animal or object. Hard to avoid, particularly if you are the maker of a Disney movie. But I still say this fly looks proud enough to me. And like it’s enjoying the sunshine.
Another one of these time-of-year things, annual photographic events — you’ve seen this flower (wood cranesbill) before, not to mention insects plunging themselves within, to extract the bounty.
With due respect to Joe, whose 14th birthday it is today, this had to be today’s shot. Most of all I like the capture of the exquisitely delicate grip it has on the petal. There was just this one, half-hour burst of sunlight today, but it augured well for the rest of spring.

Clearing away a bunch of dead foliage from the allotment this afternoon, I uncovered this beauty. It decided it was still far too early in the year to be exposed to the elements and crawled its way back under cover sharpish, but I managed to get a couple of shots off before it did so.

I took the shot, then fished it out. It lumbered around drunkenly on the table for a few minutes, drying itself off in the sunshine, then flew off and presumably will lead a long and waspy life. Therefore, no insects were harmed in the making of this picture.
Some creatures, like birds, seem in my experience to not like having cameras shoved in their faces. But insects don’t generally mind. The problem with capturing them is that they don’t stay in one place for very long. My technique largely involves setting the shutter to continuous capture then hoping the auto-focus does the work. I like this shot, though — also because of the overdwellings captured in the background, very Hebden Bridge.

Definitely the season for this flower, as I pictured it almost exactly two years ago to the day — 21/6/14 — only then initially misidentified it as violet. In fact it is wood cranesbill, Geranium sylvaticum, and very cute it is too, as the bees agree.