Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David Thoreau

On Saturday I went on a macro photography workshop at a nearby nature reserve Langford Lakes. It was a revelation. I have always enjoyed watching and photographing butterflies but had not realised how many other stunningly beautiful creatures there are out there vying for our attention. However before you can see you need to look, and in looking move slowly through the world. Our leader for the day was wildlife photographer Iain Green who introduced, what was for some of us at least, a new wonderland.

Fat-legged Garden Beetle on a Briar Rose

I love the iridescence of this garden beetle and the way in which it brings something new to the flowers it alights on

The day wasn’t perfect for this kind of photography. It was cold for June, we had to dodge the showers and worst of all it was windy. It turns out that winged insects really don’t like wind!

Thought this was a mayfly but having looked on the web not so sure!

I love the delicate tracery of the irridescent wings on this little one.

ladybird mating.jpg — Stages of the ladybird’s life cycle:
Mating

Something else I knew nothing about till Saturday! I included the picture of the ladybirds mating even though it’s not very sharp as I thought it would be fun to show the whole cycle.

I love his little face. when you look at the faces of moths, butterflies and damselflies close up you can really see where people got the idea of fairies from.

Finally to sign off, a plant that tries to fool you into thinking it’s an animal - the Bee Orchid. When I was a child there were fields full of them and pyramid orchids where we lived on the Isle of Wight. Sadly nowadays they are much more difficult to find. Apologies if any of the info about insects in this blog is incorrect. If you spot any mistakes please feel free to highlight them in the comments. In the meantime happy insect hunting!

You may have noticed I have been missing from the blogging world for a couple of weeks, several reasons for this. Firstly we have had lots of visitors, secondly the weather really has been too nice to spend much time sitting indoors at the computer, and thirdly we are in the process of trying to sell out home of thirty plus years and move to the city for our retirement, which, as many you will know, is an extremely stressful and time consuming activity!

this week I did manage to get ten minutes with my camera between meetings at the beautiful Hilliers Gardens in near Romsey - the English Country Garden, what better way to celebrate summer?