Met this wee friend. A Cucumber Spider (Araniella cucurbitina).
#AraniellaCucurbitina #CucumberSpider #spider #scotland #entomology #arachnology

Woodland Minibeast Macros

The title’s a bit of a mouthful, and I hope you like these shots from a morning’s walk in a young woodland plantation near me. It was planted up as a screen to hide an extension to the local limestone quarry, and it’s now becoming quite the place for a mini beast walk.

Start with the least interesting, perhaps. This is, I believe, a Turnip Sawfly Caterpillar, and the oak saplings are full of them. Hopefully the saplings will recover once the caterpillars have fed and fallen to the ground to pupate.

A little more colourful and still devouring the oaks, this is apparently a mottled umber moth caterpillar. You’ll have to trust me and I’ll have to trust the AI I used to identify it. Oh my, the conflicts of AI technology, but it does have its uses… and its downside too, of course.

Now this fella (I think it’s a male, as I also saw the much larger female on a previous visit) is a green cucumber spider. I spent a lot of time shooting this chap, and he’s simply gorgeous! So much so I know you’ll enjoy a close up… oh, you don’t like spiders?

What a cutie…

This shot is actually from my back garden, and from a sequence of shots as these two volucella bombylans hoverflies make a few more copies… most of the shots were top-down and less interesting, but at this point the stick they were, um, perched on rolled over. It didn’t dampen their ardour in any way I could see.

And down in the nature reserve, during the weekly butterfly count, I stumbled (literally) over this slow worm as it sunbathed. Wasn’t harmed and I restored it’s hiding place before I left.

There you go. A random selection of creatures. It does seem my photography is more ‘nature’ focused… well, it’s where I find my peace. I don’t know if the nature I interact with enjoys it as much as me, but I’ve never had complaints.

If there are complaints and you wish to toss dung at me, here’s the fella who’ll be appreciate it – a golden dung beetle!

#caterpillar #cucumberSpider #dungFly #minibeasts #oak #photography #slowWorm #spider