Hairy feet?

Check.
 Awe-inspiring mouth parts?
Check.
It must be our old friend (!) Anthophora plumipes, the hairy-footed flower bee.

I've had a busy day. This morning I set to work with a ruthless eye on eight potential images for the IGPOTY mono competition, whittled them down to four and submitted my entry. I have absolutely no expectation of winning anything - nor even of making the short list - but it has been a valuable experience in making me evaluate my photos as someone with no emotional connection to them might do. They're running a macro competition for the next few weeks, and I'll probably enter that too.

Then I went out bug hunting, and came back in an hour later with 174 shots - I've been submitting them all about the place for identifications, and I'm still waiting for confirmation on two of them, but I've added eleven sightings to iRecord this evening - my best day's tally so far.  I'm pleased to have logged a first sighting of the bee I've put in as an extra: I'm told that it's Halictus rubicundus, the orange-legged furrow bee - apparently it prefers to nest "in light soils of south-facing slopes and faces", so if it's been trying to dig in my garden, it's not surprising it looks exhausted.

The furrow bee might have been my blip today, but for the fact that I have a  rather tense relationship with the colour yellow. And in the end I couldn't resist showing the extraordinary face of the flower bee in all its glory. Don't have nightmares!