Juniper shieldbug

I don't want to big myself up too much here (though I'm going to, obviously), but this was a very difficult shot to get. And R loves it, strongly preferring it to my other offering, which is a (technically better) portrait of a hairy shieldbug. Also, though I'd have gone into court half an hour ago and sworn on oath that I've posted one before, it now seems that I never have - or if I ever did, I tagged it so poorly that it's lost in the mists of the unsearchable. So there we are: for three reasons, the juniper shieldbug gets its shoulder tapped today.

Juniper shieldbugs are about 1cm in length, mainly olive green but with very distinctive curved red markings on the corium (the thickened, leathery part of the forewing). Were you able to see the wing membranes, you'd notice that they show a dark X mark, which is also diagnostic of the species. Their traditional foodplant is the juniper, unsurprisingly, and at one time they were quite rare in the UK, being confined to juniper woodlands in the south of England. Over recent years though, they've begun to feed on the Lawson cypress (also called the Oregon cedar), which is one of the most popular conifers in British gardens, and they're now common across southern England and believed to be expanding their range. They can be seen at any time of year, overwintering as adults and breeding in the early spring, with the new generation coming to maturity around late August.

I had three problems in capturing this image. The first was that the light was poorer than you might assume, meaning that I was fighting the exposure triangle and had to use a relatively slow shutter speed. The second was that the shieldbug was horrified to discover itself being stalked, and ran hither and yon around the photinia to try to get out of my eye line. The third was that it was blowing an absolute hoolie, and this section of the shrub was too far off the ground for me to be able to stake it. Consequently I had to "spray and pray", and I ended up using over a hundred frames to secure just four usable photos. Another day I might have given up on what was clearly a fool's errand and gone off to look for something else to photograph, but I don't see these little guys very often, and I was determined to get a photo that was at least good enough for me to be able to add the record to my garden list, so I persisted.

One day I hope to run across an early instar nymph of this species, because they're delightful: if you check out the bottom left photo on the British Bugs page, I think you'll agree that they look like clowns wearing little pointed hats. Sadly, our Lawson cypress is huge, so however many juniper shieldbugs we have in the garden, and however enthusiastically they breed, they're always going to be able to find plenty of feathery foliage in which to hide.