Strange beauty

A drone photograph? Evidence of alien activity? Rock carvings? Runes? Bronze artwork? I didn't set out to take an abstract picture but, when I cropped out the surrounding context, that's what appeared

It will help if I explain that today feels like the first feelers of autumn. We have had flurries of chilly wind - the faint echo of the storms that are lashing Scotland. There was dew on the car roof. The clean, empty honey supers came off the hive, ready for putting into storage until April; all attention is now on preparation for winter. And a load of hardwood logs was delivered, and stacked by us in the log store. There is always a residue of offcuts, wood-dust and pieces of bark to tidy up after the stacking; this is the inner side of a section of bark, with tell-tale trails of a burrowing insect

I immediately leaped to the assumption that it is the elm bark beetle that is the vector of Dutch Elm Disease, but that may be over-hasty. I did not check carefully what kind of bark it was. I have read enough to discover that there are a range of different bark-burrowing beetles in UK, particularly pine and spruce trees. There is an 'Eight-toothed Spruce Bark Beetle' that has spread from Europe into South-East England and is causing enormous concern - perhaps this really is a picture of invasion by alien monsters

Since our logs are hardwood, other possibilities include oak bark beetle and ash bark beetle. Both are regarded as damaging pests. From a human economic perspective, all these species appear to be malign, however strange and beautiful the effects of their activity