Insects and Spiders

Big Privet hawk moth spied in Dorset

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Nice!!

I watched an interesting Attenborough episode earlier that explained how moths jam bats sonar to prevent them being munched.

Had a hummingbird hawk moth in the garden this morning. No pictures as they move so bloody fast but was amazing to see it.

Shot a hummingbird hawk moth this week in the Dordogne.

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Great photo, fantastic creature!

A fly day. First up a Hairy-Legged Horsefly (Hybomitra bimaculata). If you get close enough to them, many of the horseflies have almost psychedelic eyes.

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and a Semaphore Fly (Poecilobothrus nobilitatus).

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Mostly dragonflies for me, yesterday.

Common Darter, a beetle, Black Tailed Skimmer (F), Norfolk Hawker, Common Hawker.

Not certain about the common hawker ID , but it's my best guess from the pics in my dragonfly book (Bloomsbury Field Guide - would recommend).

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Stabby Stabby even looking at it...

Nice photos. I think the last one is a Southern Hawker (female) - see https://british-dragonflies.org.uk/species/southern-hawker/ for some examples

Thanks for that!

Also, thanks for your excellent hummingbird hawk moth pic. We had one in the garden at the weekend (first sighting) and I would have had no clue what I was looking at if not for your post. You were right about them being hard to capture - I got nothing. :-D

Wow

Bumped in to this beauty on a walk Sunday. About the size of a mini lighter for scale..

Maybe;
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/invertebrates/beetles/lesser-stag-beetle

Ah cool I wasn't sure what type I thought stag but wasn't sure. Ta 😀

NSFW

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There seem to be many more cockchafers around than I have ever seen before - almost every tree on my walk home last night had a gang of them buzzing around the topmost branches, even the overhead power lines had them.

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Like a frikin gang bang.

Great lesser stag beetle shot. In about 20 years of living in the South London stag beetle area I think I've still only seen them twice. Only once when I've had a camera around.

Got a full frame Sony recently and am getting much better results now, though need to make a better flash diffuser that doesn't constantly fall off.
Some recents efforts below, major lack of anything unusual in our garden lately.

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They are great. My old phone had a great macro on it until I dropped it the new Samsung is good in bright light but struggles if its low light even heavy cloud. Those Sony pics are top especially love the ant one

Thank you - it turns out that throwing money at macro photography does lead to much better results.
My £3 macro diffuser from China has just turned up so have at least economised there (though it's going to need a bit of modification to stop it slipping off).

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Drama in the greenhouse

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Green bottle doing golden hour

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Cool looking forward to the results

What's normal to the spider is chaos to the fly (wasp)