Bronzed

I know that I've posted a few of these Red-legged Shieldbugs recently, but I simply can't resist this fabulous beast, which I swept out of the Lawson cypress this morning. Given the proximity of the cypress to the willow-leaved cotoneaster on which I took this a few days ago, it's not impossible that she's the distaff half of that couple (the larger bug, on the right of the photo), but it's impossible to compare markings properly when the photos were taken from different angles and in very different light. Whatever, I love her deep bronze sheen and her elegant blue and yellow connexivum, not to mention her gleaming red ocelli and extravagantly angular pronotum. Those shoulders place her somewhere between a 1980s fashion shoot(very much my era, that tailoring), and Flash Gordon's General Kala.

In other news, Opilione Season has come round again, and I also swept several large harvestmen - or maybe that should be harvestwomen, as they all seemed to be female - from the cypress. My second photo today is an Opilio canestrinii, which I've cropped much wider than I usually would, to give her more environmental context, and show the almost ridiculous length of her legs.

This afternoon R and I put on our glad rags and went to our neighbours' 50th wedding anniversary party, which was great fun.