Toned

Having enjoyed a better day yesterday, and started to think that I might be coming out of the post-viral doldrums, today I suffered another slump. It's probably as well that the weather was largely stormy and wet, because it was so unenticing that I was able to spend most of the day at my desk without getting too frustrated. I did manage half an hour in the garden before the worst of the weather set in, and found a few nice beetles and bugs to photograph and record.

These two photos were taken five minutes apart, on the same tree trunk and in the same light. Both are green shieldbugs, but the specimen in the main image is still wearing its summer livery, while the second one is changing colour for the winter. I see a lot of green shieldbugs and I'm a little inclined to dismiss them as boring, but it's hardly their fault that they're understated, and if you look at them with fresh eyes (as R did over my shoulder just now, when he popped into my study to tell me something) they're really rather handsome.

If you prefer something less subtle, you might like the hawthorn shieldbug I've just posted to my Facebook page. That specimen is also beginning to change colour for the winter, and provides an interesting counterpoint to the one I blipped back on Sunday, which wasn't.