Crawled around on the floor to rescue this tiny little ladybird from being squished on the front steps of @mpi_astro today.

Resulting in some people walking past me & asking if I was ok 😬👍

It's a new one for me: an eleven-spotted ladybird (Ceratomegilla undecimnotata; Hügel-Marienkäfer in 🇩🇪), & it's apparently quite rare. All the more reason to save it.

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A reminder – dandelions provide vital early food for many insect species, & this tiny bee was certainly making the most of the pantry.

Since it had its head in the pollen most of the time, I didn't get any good whole body shots, but from this & other pictures, I suspect it's a sweat bee, genus Lasioglossum, perhaps L. calceatum.

Nice picture anyway 🤷‍♂️

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Well, I think we can safely say that this is a snail on a tulip 🐌🌷

What kind of snail though is another question 🧐

It had a conical top and a flatter bottom, with a white band around its keel, so best guess is a girdled snail (Hygromia cinctella; Kantige Laubschnecke in 🇩🇪).

It's very variable in colour, but iNaturalist has at least some pix like this 😬✌️

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Spotted this tiny little larva hanging from a leaf – it can't have been more than 2mm long.

From the legs & the large black head / eyes, I'd say that it's a larva of a sawfly rather than a butterfly or moth.

That'd make it superfamily Tenthredinoidea, but any more specific than that, I don't know & iNaturalist isn't too helpful either.

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Let the games begin.

A day of intermittent bright sunshine, heavy cloud, rain, & hail – spring! 🌦️

But in the gaps, a first sighting of a dronefly, genus Eristalis.

They can be hard to differentiate 😬, but while E. tenax & E. pertinax are very common here, I think this is a female E. similis, the glass-winged dronefly (Schwarze Bienenschwebfliege in 🇩🇪).

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It's cold outside, so despite occasional sunshine, most of the garden beasties are in hiding 🥶

So here's one keeping warm by being inside: it's a long-tailed silverfish (Ctenolepisma longicaudatum; Papierfischen in 🇩🇪) 🥈🐡

Despite the suggestion of many legs, there are just six, & this is an insect.

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Is it a beetle or is it a fly? 🧐

Hard to tell from a distance, but close up, it becomes obvious that Camarota curvipennis (Krummflügelige Halmfliege in 🇩🇪) is a fly, but one that wraps its wings around its bum in order to deceive.

Tiny little fellows, just 2-3mm in size, so hard to get super-crisp photos, at least handheld with my gear. But you get the idea 🙂👍

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Today's lunchtime haul from the garden – mixed sun & cloud, a little colder than yesterday, but still some nice finds 🙂👍

First, something new – a brief glimpse of the backside of this wood cricket nymph (Nemobius sylvestris; Waldgrille in 🇩🇪) before it hopped off into the undergrowth.

They're a flightless species in the family Trigonidiidae 🦗

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