Windswept

The weather went completely insane today, blowing a gale the like of which we haven't seen since the old privy roof took off and tried to take out a power line, back in December. In fact, en route to collecting various bits of equipment - watering cans, weeding buckets, etc. - which were blowing around the yard, R went and gave the roof a hard shake, to make sure the bolts our neighbour had used to reattach it to the frame were still holding firm. 

What with one thing and another - one being the fact that virtually nothing with any sense was prepared to risk being out and about in a wind that was gusting between 20 and 40mph, and the other being the obvious fact that macro photography of garden insects is an absolute fool's errand, even with high-speed flash, when every piece of vegetation for miles around is being whipped rapidly backwards and forwards - I didn't have the best day with the camera. But I was pleased to capture this Hairy-footed Flower Bee approaching a pulmonaria flower, with all landing and feeding gear lowered and locked. The Plumpies were about the only bees I saw all day, but they're known for being willing and able to fly when lesser species stay at home.

My second photo shows one of the two Red-legged Shieldbug nymphs I found down in the wild garden this afternoon, and it works as a follow up to this post from four months ago. The individual I found back in December was a second-instar nymph, and that's the stage at which it will have overwintered, but as I said then the nymphs eat voraciously, and develop fast, as soon as they emerge from winter hibernation. Both of today's specimens were at least one moult further along, making them third, or possibly even fourth instar nymphs - stages which are so hard to tell apart that they're usually just lumped together as "mid-instar". It's only the fifth and final instar that's completely distinctive, because it's so obviously a Mini-me of the adult bug.