Huddle

The temperature dropped quite sharply today, and many of the usual garden suspects disappeared into shelter. Luckily my favourite weevils are turning up almost everywhere I look at the moment, and it's almost harder to avoid them than to find some to photograph. They're remarkably unfussy about their winter quarters, but I find that the easiest place to locate them without beating or sweeping is on the lower branches of our hazel trees. They always seem to start out clinging to the under sides of the leaves, but these are falling fast now, and the weevils are beginning to move onto the catkins and buds.

I spent a while trying to capture this scene without the leaf at the top of the frame, and in the end I managed to get a shot from the other side (ie from among the branches of the tree), but it's turned out that I prefer this frontal view. You can see that the female, who's underneath, is quite a bit bigger than the male: she's a little over 3mm long, and he's probably closer to 2.5mm.

Almost twice the length, at around 5mm, is the birch catkin bug I've posted as an extra. This time last year I had literally scores of Kleidocerys resedae in the garden, huddling in groups around the buds and leaf axils of my photinias, but this year I doubt if I've seen more than half a dozen in total. I've no evidence that there's anything sinister about this - it's quite possible that last winter was the exception rather than the rule - but this is another favourite invert of mine, so I'd be happy if a few more of them turned up as the year moves towards its close.