Bee-draggled

It has rained all day in Essex. :(

I got fed up with waiting for it to stop, wrapped my camera in a plastic bag and went bug-hunting with my dog. We found this absolutely drenched bumble bee trying to shelter under a ragwort flower. I've seen bees using flowers as umbrellas before. The rain eased and the sun came out. I hoiked the bee onto the top of the head of flowers so that it would dry out more quickly. Not my best pic of the day but it sums up the weather. 

I think it might be a common carder bee. Its lovely fluffy ginger waistcoat is plastered to its thorax and the gorgeous grey bee fluff of its abdomen is clinging to its chitin, poor thing.

We got pics of hairy shieldbugs covered with rain drops and an ichneumon wasp with a broken wing that was reduced to hopping. Jazzy flushed a fox that ran, tail outstretched, between two blocks of glasshouses.