Baby pink

Sometimes you just have to stamp your little feet and go Ooooooh....

When I found the dock bug nymph in the extras on a patch of common fleabane at Tiddesley Wood this afternoon, it was very much not keen on being photographed, and I had to add macro yoga to the usual tai chi, balancing on one elbow, with my head sticking out from under the other arm and both legs in the air, to get the shot. It's possible that this isn't quite true, but there was definitely a fair bit of contortion, and one-handed shooting, and some moderately unseemly language involved. Given that we'd failed to hit it off, I went on my way as soon as reasonably possible, leaving the nymph to get on with its day.

Imagine if you will, my surprise an hour later, on walking past the fleabane again, when I spotted the exuvia at the back of this shot in the place where I was pretty sure there had previously been a nymph. And then, on further investigation, discovered this very freshly eclosed adult dock bug, still too soft to be able to spread its new wings and escape my attentions, but still just as camera shy as it had been an hour earlier. Obviously if I'd had the tiniest inkling that it was going to do this I'd have stayed on it and observed the process, and I take it pretty hard, to be honest, that the dock bug didn't mention its intentions the first time we met.

Spiteful, I call it.