Another day, another bug.

I'm sure all this bug photography is getting pretty dull for you guys - but it's a revelation to me. I'm terrified of bugs - but was only about 4 inches away from this one.

It's a huge black bee - well, that's what you think when you're running away from one screaming and flapping - but when you get close you see the beautiful maroon/brown wings that go iridescent purple and blue given a scrap of sunlight, and that their abdomen is actually grey stripes and hairy. They make very obliging models too: spending ages on each flower so you can get close enough. This one spent long enough on one small bunch of flowers that I had long enough to go in, change lens, come half out, reconsider and decide on a close up filter too, go back in, dither for a while over which one to pick and eventually come back out. There he was still hanging about for his photocall. Your average buzzy yellow bee would have been in a different county by then. They also don't feed like normal bees - who crawl inside flowers. These guys take route one and just plunge a big spiky bit of their mouth into the base of the flower and suck all the good stuff out that way.

Quiet day, as you can probably tell. Late start, lots of hanging about reading, eating, drinking and lounging by the pool. We also both managed to get a lot of planning done: Mr B planned a platform by the river, to be built from materials bought a few years ago for the half-finished extension that (I'm guessing by implication) will now always remain half-finished. I settled back and made a plan for world domination, well, at least enough that I can afford a proper macro lens anyway!