July Bugs!

[ CW: spiders ]

It's been an odd summer so far. Mainland Europe has been having a devastating heatwave, while the UK has been cold and rainy pretty much every day for the past few weeks. It feels like April again, which is definitely preferable to the heat but it's still not great.

The weather has also meant that the large and colourful bugs you expect to see during the summer haven't been out much, so there aren't many photos to show off yet. Here's some of the insects I've seen so far though:

This is a cute little moth! It's not quite visible in the photo but its wings curved upwards at the back which reminded me a bit of helicopter seeds. I like the straw-like tufts coming out of its forelegs.

A small moth with a yellow head and brown wings. The wings are held closely together in a kind of pod shape.

I think this bug is a Gatekeeper butterfly (Pyronia tithonus) which is fairly common around this time of year. They look fairly similar to other common butterflies, but Gatekeepers can be differentiated via the eyespots on their wings, which are notable for having two pupils rather than one.

Additionally, this one is probably female because males have darker patches of scales on their forewings which release pheromones for attracting mates. I've seen a few of the male ones around too but didn't get any photos.

A butterfly resting on a white flower. Its underwings are brown with a few white spots on them, and its forewings are a rich orange colour with one large black eyespot, which has two white dots for pupils.

I normally only see tiny black slugs around the garden, so seeing this plump transparent one was a nice surprise! The solid clump you can seen near the middle should be its internal organs.

A pinkish slug with light-brown stripes running down its body. The slug is fairly transparent, so just past the head you can see solid white shapes underneath its skin.

Oh! It's a mayfly!

A slightly sad thing about taking photos of bugs is that by the time they're uploaded there is a good chance the bug in question has died, either due to being eaten by another creature or simply due to their short lifespan as adults. This is extremely true of mayflies which only live as adults for a few days at best.

A green mayfly with large transparent wings resting upside down on a wall.

It's nice to see them though! I particularly like this darker one that has an extra pair of larger eyes, called turban eyes, which can detect ultraviolet light and assist them in finding female mayflies. It looks very silly.

A mayfly with a dark red body and an extra pair of large orange eyes next to its regular eyes.

This is some kind of tiny solitary wasp or maybe a bee! I love getting to see bugs absolutely caked in pollen like this one is, there's even some stuck to their eyes!

Speaking of eyes, the three bumps you can see on the top of their head are ocelli, which are small simple eyes that most flying insects have in addition to their larger and more complex compound eyes. Ocelli aren't able to form images but they can very quickly process changes in light intensity which is believed to assist in flying.

Close up photo of a tiny wasp. It is mostly black in colour and has lots of yellow pollen stuck to its face and forelegs.

I'm not sure what this next bug is. I thought it was a beetle at first but it looks vaguely like a shield bug so I'm guessing it's somewhere within the Hemiptera range. Whatever they are, they're very cute!

A bronze coloured bug with a very shiny body. It has a small head with two thin antennae and two round black eyes that are reflecting sunlight back at the camera.

I found some flower crab spiders last year but none of them were this big!! I really cannot overstate how large she was, like twice the size of the normal flower crab spiders I see.

A big white spider with long legs and a huge abdomen. Its body is covered in small hairs and has brown stripes running down the side of its cephalothorax.

Here's a close up of her head.

Photo of the spider's head. It has eight small eyes spread out in a crescent shape.

And finally, here's close up of her leggies. Here you can see all the little hooks she uses to grapple onto surfaces (and other bugs) including the two claws right at the end of her feet.