There’s something strangely animate about this picture. It’s the leaf buds on an Acer growing in the garden. The tree has been gradually turning colour over the last few weeks, and is now on its last legs, but with a borrowed 105mm Nikon macro lens it was too good an opportunity to miss.
Yellow crab spider catching a bee on field scabious
It has been so drab over the last few days that I have had to trawl through this year’s archives to find an image of interest. Back in late May we stopped by the roadside near the town of Sancerre in France. Seeing a bee perched on a field scabious I thought I would take some macro shots. The bee seemed remarkably still, and then I realised it had actually been caught by a crab spider. The first in this series can be found here.
You can find out more about crab spiders, and particularly the one native British species, on the excellent Arkive site.
Some more pictures of insects (OK, I appreciate spiders are not strictly insects) can be found in my insects photo gallery.
The very last of the Autumn leaves – this one is Liquidambar styraciflua, sweet gum
You can find more images of leaves in the Autumn gallery and the leaves gallery
