Insects and Spiders

Loads of tiny Mint Moths in the garden tonight.

spotted behind our tent in Norfolk last night. a bloody nosed beetle, or blood spewing beetle, so called because of its defense mechanism of secreting a blood red liquid from it's mouth when threatened. nice!

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An eye-catching Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) in the wilderness of Dungeness last weekend

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We were recently staying at an Air BnB in Fife and this beauty was mounted in the bathroom. I should have put something beside it to show scale, but can confirm that things like this should not fly!!

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Love that Common Blue pic.

Anyone know what this is? Went camping in Sussex at weekend and in the 5 minutes I wasn't trying to stop children falling in streams I got a chance to take a few photos.
Loads of dragonflies but didn't have enough time to stalk them.

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London garden still pretty devoid of anything very exciting, though I spent a while annoying this ant the other day (I presume a new queen trying to start a nest up - was under a flowerpot).

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Nice photos. Hard to tell without a top view but almost certainly one of the Longhorn Beetles, probably a Spotted longhorn beetle (Rutpela maculata) - often seen on umbel flowers like yours.
https://www.naturespot.org.uk/species/rutpela-maculata

Yes definitely one of those having checked against some of the other photos, thank you.
Stayed pretty still which helped with photos. If I'd had more time I'd have tried to do a proper focus stack but flash plus higher aperture is a lot easier.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-south-west-wales-62425367

Been quite a bit of action in the bee hotel this weekend, possibly a Blue Miner Bee:

A hornet mimic hoverfly in the garden yesterday.

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Basking in the sun this evening on a patio chair.

I was reading on my luscious green lawn earlier when something caught my eye. I must have been sat next to an ant's nest that was spawning! A load of them appeared and stumbled around like new born foals before eventually flying off.

Bit of an infestation of ants and flants at my parents.

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Loads of these around at the mo

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Fantastic photo!

Nice - European Firebug (Pyrrhocoris apterus), at the moment unusual in the UK but widespread in continental Europe.

I've rescued an old Panasonic compact from a lifetime of draw abandonment to live in my bag. It has a "macro" mode and I've enjoyed stalking some critters with it. Most are out of focus, or only partly focused because of the shallow dof, but the occasional few come out OK.

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Dunno what type this is (southern hawker?), but I think it was in the process of dying from something or other. Shortly after I took these pictures it was upside down in the leaf litter doing some futile wing flapping.

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Yes, a male Southern Hawker. Can't find too much about lifespans although one site claims about 6 weeks as an adult.

Today is a fly day for me. First up a Common Greenbottle (Lucilia sericata) to go with the one posted by @Yukirin

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