litte jewel in the grass

...a mixed bag of weather today, mostly cloudy but with some breaks in the cloud until the rain returned late afternoon.

We went to Salisbury for a birthday lunch and a lovely walk around the city, but not before stopping at Martin Down National Nature Reserve to seek out today's blip.

It is a huge reserve with varied habitats and we only managed to explore a tiny part of it. At first, it appeared disappointing compared to our home patch, but after a while some interesting insects came to light. Once again, the biggest issue for photography was poor light and strong winds. I wasn't sure if any frames would be good enough to blip but felt confident that I had 3 ichneumons, 1 beetle, 1 moth, and 1 bug sufficiently in focus to identify.

Even though it is not a great image, the bug, which was a Birch Catkin Bug, nearly made it as today's blip because it is a first for me and because it has taught me to look even closer at tiny insects as it was less than 5mm in length. The ichneumons will take me a while to identify, and the moth was an Angle Shades.

All of which leaves us with this bright metallic Cereal Leaf Beetle, Oulema rufocyanea (tough it could equally be melanopus). This is also a tiny insect at just 6mm.

Blipfoto's server issues and a late return home have put me behind with commenting, a situation that will be rectified as quickly as possible...