Another parasite of Colletes bees was this pretty, wingless blister #beetle. Adults emerge after spending winter in the nest to mate & lay eggs near new nests. Mobile larvae (triungulins) grab ♂️ bees to infest ♀️ while they mate. Larvae ride back to eat bee eggs+pollen. #Meloidae: #Tricrania NC, USA
I'm legit addicted to drawing shiny things
I love the weird faces of Criorhina ranunculi, seen at Sarehole Mill #UKwildlife #Diptera #flies
A grey rock that has a beautiful fossil trilobite. The rock is rough, but the trilobite sections are smooth. One of the main features is a compound eye, made of of many lenses.
The beautiful preservstion of trilobite compound eyes will never cease to amaze me. On this little 400ish million year old Phacops you can see all the little lenses - each one a rigid calcite mineral crystal! Together they had excellent 360° vision, perfect for finding lunch on the seafloor.
A tangled cluster of at least four bees on sand
A mating ball of Early Colletes bees - Colletes cunicularius #UKwildlife
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as pos-sible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. 6
From James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time
#booksky 💙📚
I mean look at these Plugs (affectionate) 🥹
Extreme macro photo of a tiny reddish brown oribatid mite standing on the face of a British 5 pence coin. The mite is incredibly small compared with the raised letters and engraved portrait on the coin, emphasizing its minute size. Its body is smooth, glossy, and almost spherical, like a dark translucent bead with tiny legs tucked beneath it. Most of the coin is softly out of focus, creating a dramatic shallow depth of field that draws attention to the mite and the metallic texture around it.
Extreme macro side view of a tiny glossy reddish brown oribatid mite perched on the ridged edge of a British 5 pence coin. The coin edge looks like a rough silver cliff above a warm tan background. The mite’s rounded body shines like polished glass, with faint reflections on its surface, while its delicate legs grip the metal edge. The huge scale contrast makes the mite look both jewel like and otherworldly.
Close side profile macro of a tiny eyeless oribatid mite on the edge of a thin piece of bark or leaf litter. The mite has a dark reddish brown, nearly spherical body that looks smooth and glassy, with tiny orange brown legs and mouthparts visible underneath. The background is creamy and blurred, while the bark surface is textured with crumbs of soil and organic debris. The image gives the mite a strange alien presence despite its very small size.
Head on macro view of a tiny reddish brown oribatid mite walking across a piece of dry leaf litter. Its glossy rounded back dominates the frame like a dark polished dome, while its small legs and front appendages reach forward over the rough orange brown surface. Bits of soil and decomposing plant matter surround it, and the shallow focus makes the mite stand out sharply against a softly blurred background. The perspective makes it look like a miniature alien creature exploring a rugged landscape.
Eyeless oribatid on a 5 pence coin, about dime sized for US folks. Something about the way these tiny mites move makes them feel almost xenomorph, all glossy, eyeless, alien-esque.
🌿🪲🪳 #Invert #nature #macrophotography
A Green Tiger Beetle. Green with cream spots, huge eyes and fearsome jaws. Long spikey legs for running fast.
Is there a better way to spend a spring day than lying flat on the ground photographing Green Tiger Beetles?
Sawfly by-catch having a spruce-up after removal from the sweep net. 🙂 One of a few Dark-edged Beeflies (Bombylius major) at Thornton in the @ldvnnr.bsky.social today. @uk-soldierflies.bsky.social @ynuorg.bsky.social
Light grey colored fairy shrimp with huge black eyes and a bright red forked tail
Streptocephalus from a roadside ditch in San Patricio County. creature of the utmost politeness
A small fish called a Fringehead due to the growths above the eyes peeks out of a former boring clam burrow and glares at the diver making a lot of noise.
That little fish sticking its head out of what was likely a boring clam burrow is a Yellow-finned Fringehead. Something has disturbed his rest it seems... Fringeheads have a lot in common with Muddy the Mudskipper. A relative, the Sarcastic Fringehead, bites & hangs on without asking permission.
A pop. lit. piece from the BBC discussing whalefall ecology. Lots of our favorite critters get a mention: hagfish, scale worms, snot flower worms, amphipods
We’re constantly surprised': The strange deep-sea creatures that eat whales share.google/amJpU2HEyDqs...
hey buddy my eyes are up here, no seriously they're 50% of my body mass, you can't miss 'em
Lots of Mire Mourner sawflies (Dolerus madidus) in a rushy meadow at Cali Heath @yorkswildlife.bsky.social reserve today. Males with abdomen orange-banded; females with orange more extensive, over the thorax as well. Things really starting to liven up now. 😃 @ynuorg.bsky.social #symphyta #sawflies
Macro photograph of a pearly white to rose colored leaf beetle with a metallic green head, pronotum, and various lines and blobs on its back, standing on a grean leaf with a number of flower buds at upper left.
A Calligrapha beetle- named of course for the beautiful inscriptions on its elytra- sits on its dogwood host plant. Texas.
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Nearby, there are houses with garden banks abutting the road. Yesterday, 3 of them were buzzing with dozens of mining bees. Mostly Yellow-legged Mining Bees, but good numbers of Cliff Mining Bees. Best of all was seeing the crowd of Black Oil Beetles.
#bees #MiningBees #beetles #UKwildlife
I have been looking a lot at Chalcid wasps recently- an amazingly diverse group of insects that may contain as many as 500,000 species. 🔬
They’re everywhere, but you may live your whole life without ever noticing them because they are so tiny. I think you would be missing out!
i sometimes find myself grateful that we got several centuries of good literature and about a hundred years of good film before defunding and devaluing these forms of art
Exciting to see a bucket-list spider while in Mexico!
An Ogre-faced Spider that I think must be an Asianopis sp. it also looks like there might only be one species present in Mexico? If that is the case this should be Asianopis aurita.
#Asianopis #iNaturalist #Spider
A macro photo showing alate (winged reproductive male and female) black harvester ants near a burrow entrance on desert sand. The male alate is a bit smaller than the female, and has a markedly smaller head. Also visible, mostly out of focus, are a few wingless workers.
A macro photo, ground level, of a male black harvester ant alate (winged reproductive caste) on desert sand.
A macro photo of an unlucky male black harvester ant alate (winged reproductive caste) hanging upside-down in a spider web.
A macro photo, vertical orientation, looking down at a female black harvester ant alate (winged reproductive caste) on desert sand. To the left of her are two wingless worker ants, both of which are much smaller than she is.
Black harvester ant alates (winged reproductive males & females), Mojave Desert. Their emergence was well-synchronized across numerous colonies; on the same day I saw them coming out of nests hundreds of yards (even a few miles) apart. The male is the tiny-headed one, but I don't judge. #BugSky 🐙🌿🐜
This moth is a real 'character' - just through the way it holds itself! It is quite small and common, but one of my favourites! - Phyllodesma kermesifolia. I didn't notice before taking my photo that it appears to have a slight injury on its side. - moth-trapping at CIMA, Tarifa, Cadiz Province, Andalucia, Spain on the 8th of March 2026.
Even commoner still is this moth - the butterfly-like Gerinia honoraria is really attractive when fresh like this one! I visit different sites every year, so my numbers seen are not a direct comparison like a transect would be, but they do give an approximate measure of comparative population sizes at moth traps. So, in 14 years of regular surveys I have seen just under 420 Phyllodesma kermesifolia, but this species is about 10 times as common - I have seen just over 4,200! - moth-trapping at CIMA, Tarifa, Cadiz Province, Andalucia, Spain on the 8th of March 2026
At dusk I switched on my moth traps again and then went on a circular walk along the coast. Here is the view across the Strait to Jebel Musa and to the left you can just about see the lights of Ceuta. - moth-trapping at CIMA, Tarifa, Cadiz Province, Andalucia, Spain on the 8th of March 2026.
Moth trapping at CIMA, Tarifa, Cadiz Province, Andalucia, Spain on the 8th of March 2026, had only 92 moths of 33 species from 6 traps - here are some stars: - see alt button for photos #teammoth #spanishmoths www.facebook.com/permalink.ph...
An iridescent dark navy blue beetle with short soft wing covers on top of a very large soft abdomen walks across a dead leaf. It has a very narrow thorax and head, and beaded antennae.
An iridescent dark navy blue beetle with short soft wing covers on top of a very large soft abdomen walks across a dead leaf. It has a very narrow thorax and head, and beaded antennae.
An iridescent dark navy blue beetle with short soft wing covers on top of a very large soft abdomen lies curled up with legs tucked in on a leaf. It has a very narrow thorax and head, and beaded antennae. There is an orange-yellow droplet of oily cantharidin coming out of the middle leg joint.
Close up of an orange-yellow droplet of oily cantharidin coming out of the middle leg joint of the beetle.
Excited to finally get pics of this genus of oil/blister beetle! This female played dead when disturbed & exuded droplets of cantharidin from her legs. This sticky substance can cause blisters & has been called "Spanish fly". Larvae are parasites of solitary bee nests. #Meloidae: #Meloe; NC, USA
Rhizanthes lowii "flower" photo by Ch'ien Lee, a terrible plant structure that looks like a free-range rectum, positively swarming with delighted flies
"flower" of Mitrastemon yamamoti from Suetsugu (2018), another stinky plant structure that attracts a VAST array of insects (including flies, beetles, cockroaches, orthopterans, etc) to come nibble its horrid pink flesh
reading up on holoparasitic plants, regretting it instantly
A bright yellow Ladybird with black spots. It is seen on a pale green leaf. The ladybird is facing the camera.
A beautiful 22-spot Ladybird seen in the garden yesterday.
#Coccinellidae
No one has succeeded in teaching dogs to count, to read, or write. But in a few sessions, with simple, well-studied methods, you can succeed in driving them mad. For want of a better one, this is a new common denominator. Whatever one may say, it brings us closer. You can’t drive a cedar mad.
Henri Michaux, tr. David Ball
A wholesome dinner with friends.
The male Snow Fleas clambering over hill and dale this morning at Felbrigg @norfolknats.bsky.social
LOOK AT THEM