Garden Wildlife (Summer)

A late stag beetle (male).

I've recently been attempting to take photos of insects in the garden, sometimes successfully, usually not. The most successful photo shoot involved this male stag beetle, who obligingly stayed still long enough for me to get the camera set up properly in order to take a decent shot. Stag beetles usually appear in the garden in early June, but presumably because of the cold Spring, they were a month late this year. Three males and one female have been spotted so far. I doubt if there will be any more this year, as they only survive in their adult stage for around three weeks. It's mate, lay eggs and die for the adult beetles. I'm not even sure the males are able to eat. Impressive beasts though.

A hard-working bee.

Flying insects have proved particularly tricky to photograph. They rarely stay still long enough to be able to point the camera, get focussed properly and SNAP! It took many attempts to produce the picture of this bee feeding upon blackberry flowers (above). Got it eventually! I might invest in a macro lens when I have some spare cash. Do it properly.

Some sad catnip.

Whilst I'm here, I have to report that the two catnip plants that were planted in the garden earlier in the summer have suffered terribly. The one above has started to grow back, but the other one is just a mass of brown sticks - so beautiful when it flowered as well. No idea what happened to the catnip plants - some disease or other, I suppose...

An innocent face.

It couldn't possibly have had anything to do with this innocent-looking fellow. Could it?