Acericerus

The equinoctial gales arrived today, with a vengeance. I looked out of the kitchen window at the wildly swaying trees in the back garden, checked my weather app, which was promising 40mph gusts, and said, "Only an idiot would try to do macro photography in this." "On the other hand," said R, "you're running the challenge, so...." 

So I put my idiot hat on, got the macro, and stomped off into the storm.

792 photos later (yes, really), I decided that I probably had enough keepers to be able to stop bugging the garden bugs, and called it a day. It's a measure of how terrible the conditions were that 780 of those files have already been consigned to the trash. The good news is that I won't have to go through this again tomorrow.

Anyway, this tiny chappess - about 6mm long - is an Acericerus ribauti - though I'm only sure of the identification because my record has been checked and verified by an expert. Females of A. ribauti and Acericerus vittifrons are almost identical, though males of the two species are distinguishable by their facial markings and antennal palettes (neither of these features being present in the females). Both species mainly live on field maple (though I beat this one from a photinia) and they're fairly easy to find from around August onwards. They overwinter as adults, and breed in the spring.