Naked

I spent quite a bit of the morning scuttling up and down the garden to check on the Red-legged Shieldbugs on the apple tree, but still managed to miss the moment when this brand-new adult emerged, because R and I were out having lunch. That'll teach me to go off enjoying myself.

To be fair, even if I had witnessed the event I think I'd have been chary of recording it, because there's no easy way of photographing the back of this leaf without moving it, and I'd have been worried about dislodging the nymph, or interfering in some other way with the emergence process. As it was, when I spotted the teneral adult - which can only have been minutes old - it was fully eclosed and walking away from its exuvia, so I felt able to take hold of the shoot and twist it upwards to get this shot.

At this stage the more mature bug was on the other side of this leaf, and they both then led me a dance, up and down the shoot and across the surface of the apple, as I tried without success to capture them in the same photo. After a few minutes I gave up and left them in peace, and by the next time I went to take a look at them, about three hours later, they were huddled together again in the curl of the leaf, and both equally well coloured so that they were virtually indistinguishable from each other. By this time it was so dark in the wild garden that I didn't even try to get a photo of them in their splendid metallic livery, but they were an impressive sight.

I've made a little Facebook post about the pair of them, if you'd care to take a look.