Minibeast Microclimate

Lovely mild, sunny, calm day here in Essex, ideal for basking bugs. I found this hawthorn shield bug on a dogwood bush that grows on the southern side of one of our boiler house chimneys. Bugs love it there, it's where I photographed the green shield bug that made the Buglife calendar in 2013. The chimney acts like a giant storage heater, creating an insect-friendly microclimate. 

I watched this bug for some time. It climbed to the top leaf of the branch that it was on where a tiny spider was lurking. I got a nice shot of the spider in focus and the shield bug soft focus in the background, dwarfing it. I was going to Blip that but the colour in my pic above swayed me. Blip is full of beautiful autumn leaf colours so I thought I'd add some insect colour. :) Love the colour of the wild dogwood leaves and stems too. Cultivated forms of this plant are often used in municipal plantings. The bare, jewel-coloured stems show up beautifully in winter when there's not much colour about.

I thought of the wonderful pics on here that people are posting from arboreta. Fantastic colours but often the trees aren't indigenous. I got a striking pic of the leaves of a starved sheep's parsley plant that had turned crimson against the zinging yellow of a field maple. Homespun tree peeping. :)