Mad Max

You people really are the best! Thank you so much for all the love you bestowed on yesterday's Brown Argus - I've been quite overwhelmed, and rather pink around the ears, at some of the nice things you said about my journal. If I haven't yet responded individually to your comment, please be assured that I've read every one, and have been happy about and thankful for all of them.

Today was a rather odd day, weather-wise, and a trip with R to Croome this morning failed to turn up a single damsel or dragon; but this afternoon it warmed up a little and the sun threatened to come out, encouraging a few invertebrates to show their faces. I have some butterflies and beetles, and even a couple of quite nice bees and hoverflies, but of everything I photographed today I'm most taken with this weevil, which looks to me to come from some dystopian sci-fi world in which even the bugs wear armour plating, and have spear-like weaponry on the ends of their antennae.

I asked the hive mind a little while ago if it could identify it, so that I could tell you all about it, but the hive mind shuffled its feet like Topo Gigio, while humming a little tune and pretending not to hear the question - perhaps unsurprisingly, because there are nearly five hundred species of weevil in the UK, many if not most of which are difficult to identify from photos. I'm going to take a punt on it being something like Barynotus obscurus, but if that's the case I still can't come up with any fascinating facts about it, I'm afraid. Still, I think it's rather a handsome little beast - in a Mad Max kind of way.