I’ve been waiting for this very pretty shield bug species to appear in the garden again this year, but no luck so far 🤷‍♂️

Still, I’m glad I made a brief stop at the lake in Edingen during this evening’s 47km ride – there were lots of these Italian striped or minstrel bugs (Graphosoma italicum) around.

I mean, they’re kind of hard to miss 🙂👍

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A nice evening find, just as the sun was setting over the valley & the temperature finally dropping 🥵

These are European woolly carder bees (Anthidium manicatum), dashing around the lavender bush, intermittently hovering & feeding.

First two pictures are females, second two males. The males were defending the bush aggressively, confronting other bees & me too 😬✌️

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Surprisingly few insects in the garden this muggy, still, & cloudy evening, apart from many wasps & hornets in the fig tree 🐝

But nature has a way of helping me increase my bug species count & sent me a new moth, this magnificently-named rose-flounced tabby (Endotricha flammealis; Geflammter Kleinzünsler in German)

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Female common green bottle flies (Lucilia sericata) are often somewhat larger than males, but the difference in this pair is striking 😳

It's known that the males are attracted to young females flashing their wings at around 178Hz.

Despite their smaller body size, males have slightly larger eyes to pick up on this flirting.

Clearly it worked in this case 💞

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Well, this could easily become a new obsession 😻

Saw several of these small, jewel-like insects flitting rapidly among the other wasps & bees on this hot afternoon.

Made them very hard to photograph, & the bright Sun overemphasises the sparkles.

Nevertheless, it's a ruby-tailed cuckoo wasp , likely one of the Chrysis ignita complex, which are tricky to ID separately.

More anon ... 🤞

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One of my favourite insects last summer was Ectophasia crassipennis (Breitflüglige Raupenfliege in German, broad-winged caterpillar fly in English).

Today I managed to get some grungy pictures of a female – the yellow/brown clear wings & the black & yellow abdomen give it away.

I'm still waiting for a male though – their wings are much prettier. Pic from last July added.

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I suggested yesterday that I might develop an unhealthy obsession with the beautiful ruby-tailed cuckoo wasps (Chrysis ignita complex).

That seems to be the case – here are some more shots, still maddeningly just short of super sharp, mostly because they're very small & move very quickly in heat.

@albertcardona says they only fly when it's hot & sunny, a pain for this photographer 🥵

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Never ceases to amaze me that there always seem to be new arthropods in our garden to discover & photograph 🙂

Despite the scorching sunshine, I managed to get a half-decent picture of this bristly tachnid – I'm pretty certain it's a long-tailed tube fly (Cylindromyia brassicaria), which seems to lack a specific German name 🧐

Note the large white calypters at the base of the wings 👍

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Finally! 🙂

Almost three months after seeing my first scorpionfly in the garden, I saw & photographed a male today 🦂🪰

In the side-on photo, you can see the magnificent proboscis shared by both genders, while the male also has the curved genitals which give the genus its name.

The thin, caliper-shaped hypovalves in the top down photo suggest that it's a common scorpionfly (P. communis).

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