I realise that we are now a week into August but better late than never.  There were so many different insects about last month that I will have to make more than one post to cover them.  I have also included some photos of insects that I saw during June most of which were still about in July.  I will list the insects in the order in which I saw them or was able to photograph them.  I am not including the dragonfly, damselfly and butterfly photos that I have already posted but I may include different photos of the same type of insect.

The Speckled Wood shown above had a little bit of its wing missing but was quite a bright, new-looking insect.  The next photo is of something none of us want in our gardens.

These nasties chomp their way through lilies and fritillaries and do it very quickly too.  They cover themselves in their own excrement.

The next two photos are of the same unidentified insect and the photos aren’t that clear either.   Ichneumon wasp or sawfly?

Note the extremely long ovipositor!

I realise that spiders aren’t insects but I’m still including this one here nevertheless.  Because these spiders do not make webs and live a nomadic life, the female has to carry her eggs around with her.  Some wolf spiders even carry their spiderlings about with them too.  When the spiderlings are due to hatch, the female spins a large ‘nursery web’ in the vegetation and puts the egg sac there.  Wolf spiders run down their prey like their namesakes.

Here are some more little insects that gardeners could do without.  This photo also shows how good feverfew is at attracting them.

 

The Small and the Essex Skipper butterflies are very similar.  The difference is that the Essex Skipper is greyer underneath and its antennal tip is black underneath.  I don’t think I will ever be able to tell the difference.

There will be more insects in the next post.