April bugs

Photos taken:
April
[ CW: spiders ]

April was a rough month for bugs. Not only was it extremely cold and windy, it also rained pretty much every day of the month, so I had very opportunities to look at bugs. Here's a round-up of some of the beasts I managed to photograph.

Right at the beginning of the month I found this frog! I must have almost stepped on her in the long grass because she tried to get away from me very quickly, but I did manage to get this one good image of her. The pose she's doing with her head looking back is cute.

I've compared this photo to the frog photos from last year, and I don't recognise this one so she might be a new addition! I'll have to get a closer photo to tell for sure, but there might be five frogs in the garden now!

Photo of a small green frog sitting by the grass. Her back is towards the camera, but has turned her head so you can see her beautiful eyes and cheek sacks.

There's also this mystery beetle! Apologies for the low image quality, this thing was absolutely tiny; you can see it here resting in the head of a dandelion. It's wing casing had a nice pattern, but I can't tell you much more about it.

Three photos of a tiny beetle hiding in a bright yellow dandelion head.

Flies have quickly become one of my favourite bug groups, and hoverflies are probably my favourite of the lot. They're just fun to watch! This species is a fairly common one to see throughout the year but I haven't photographed it before, so I didn't realise some segments of their wings are tinted, just like a dragonfly.

A yellow and black hoverfly resting on a white petal. It has large eyes, a fluffy body, and a striped abdomen. Its wings are mostly transparent, apart from two tinted segments near the outer edges.

Ordinary black flies are cool too! The way their wings look reminds me of the thin plastic texture on transparent rainmacs and umbrellas. If only I could feel this little guy's wings without damaging them...

A common black fly with red eyes and spines running down its thorax. Its wings have a wrinkled texture almost like leather or thin plastic.

Beeflies are cute beasts! There were loads of them all throughout April, hovering from flower to flower and drinking nectar with their long snoot, but they almost never stop moving so it was hard to get good pictures. I only managed to photograph this one because it had sat down in the grass to rest.

An extremely fluffy bee-like fly with a long and pointy proboscis. Its wings have an interesting two-tone pattern with the darker segments running up and down like a wave. The beefly's eyes look almost sad. A bit like a muppet.

Due to the way Beeflies hover over flowers rather than landing on them, they are sometimes referred to as pollen thieves. It's a bit of a rude thing to do I guess, but it does keep them safe from all of the ambush predators sitting on the flower heads, such as this spider:

A woolly looking spider sitting on a white flower. It is almost completely brown apart from a white squiggle on its head. The spider's legs are tucked and curled up is a variety of strange directions making it look a bit mangled.

The spider's body and legs looks sorta crumpled up so I thought this one was dead at first, but it did move after I blew on it slightly. Not sure of the species, but it has an interesting white splodge on its cephalothorax; maybe it's supposed to resemble bird poo?

Finally, I found this cute little spider emerging from a crevice. These ones have such silly eyes; I love them.

Photo of a small brown spider on a wooden post. The spider has two large eyes that are reflecting the sun back at the camera. To the sides of the spider's head, you can just about see two smaller pairs of eyes behind each large eye.