Playing dead

It was a brilliantly sunny, though very cold, day, and I knew it was likely that the owls would be flying this afternoon. But still tired after yesterday's trip to Cardiff, and with a weekend's Boy-sitting to come, I talked myself out of a trip to the Cotswold scarp and just pottered around the garden instead. 

Of the two beetles I found, neither is a new discovery for me, but this is the less common and therefore probably the more interesting. The Lesser Thorn-tipped Longhorn Beetle is much shorter than its name, at around 6mm, though males like this specimen can add a smidge to that because their antennae are longer than their body. Under threat - for instance of having their photos taken - they pull all their legs underneath them, and immediately start to look so much like a bit of old bird lime that they become virtually invisible. If investigated further, they're wont to throw themselves on their backs and play dead. I found this one on the photinia, warmed it in my hand until it started to move a little, then popped it on the seat of the nearby arbour to have its photo taken before returning it to the shrub. If you'd like to see it when it's not pretending to be somewhere else, there's a more alert specimen here.

My second photo is an Orange Ladybird - strangely, one of my most common garden species this year, though that's not usually the case. Again, I've posted these several times before, but in today's image I like the way the flash has brought out the curved, translucent edges of the wing cases and pronotum,. The pronotum or neck plate is unusually deep, and provides cover for the head. The Orange Ladybird is around the same length as the Lesser Thorn-tipped Longhorn Beetle, but being chunkier it looks larger. It mainly eats powdery mildew from the leaves of trees.

This afternoon R and I went to Stratford, and walked along the river in glorious autumnal light. At the time I was quite reconciled to foregoing the owls, and I know even now that I made the right decision, but I cannot tell a lie: when I saw Hillyblips' post I made a kind of mewing noise from the pain of deprivation. But as we owlers (more or less) say: there's always next week.