I've got a bug

The trouble with picking whinberries (you may call them bilberries) with a berry rake is that you can't help but collect twigs, leaves and other  bits of debris which often include tiny insects like the little shieldbug seen here and some even smaller beetles and spiders. I don't want to take them them from their natural habitat so have to spend time easing them out of my berry haul.

In the over 20 years I've been picking whins in Rosebush quarry  I have never seen the vegetation so parched. The usually moist mossy  underlay was like a desiccated sponge and in places the bushes had turned the colour of saffron. 
As we picked the peace was broken by a group of visitors learning the history of the long abandoned slate workings as they surveyed us from the rim of the huge pit that is the prime picking spot. More welcome for me was my first sighting for several years of cinnabar moth caterpillars on ragwort. 
The berries were not prolific but we came away with about a kilo.