Holiday bugs

I've been going through our holiday photos and there are rather too many that look like this ...

One of oh-so-many swallow tails that were just to quick for me

I am quite gutted how many beautiful butterflies I didn't manage to capture (and son is gutted by all the grasshoppers that got away). But here is the edit of those critters that I did manage to snap.

I think this one might have been dead! Hue, Vietnam

 

Bees drinking from a lily in a pot pond. Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Well camouflaged and a bit slower than your typical grasshopper, as if crossed with a stick insect. Angkor, Cambodia

Palm crickets from the bamboo train ride, Battambang, Cambodia

 

Dinner crickets, and beetles and small birds. Pursat, Cambodia

Dragonfly, Angkor, Cambodia

Silk worms, Silk Island, Phnom Penh

We do love a good shield bug, and this is a beauty! Angkor, Cambodia

Ok, so catching them at it was cheating. Angkor, Cambodia

Moths are so much more obliging than butterflies. Note the transparent 'eyes'. These were as big as my hand, and satiated my lepidopteric desires. Angkor, Cambodia

small quiet creatures

We have found some wonderful life in our garden and on our walks and I itch to use their patterns and shapes in new work. I love the strikingly geometric grasshopper, like a moving blueprint of some complex mechanical contraption. The caterpillar of The Cinnabar moth is ingeniously camouflaged amongst the ragwort flowers but his yellow and black stripes remind me of some outlandish theatre pantaloons. But my favourite is the Gatekeeper, a modest little butterfly with a name that sums up his habit of lingering around the brambles and nettles that frame the garden gates and line the country lanes here. At the moment I am working up some sketches of the pair of goldfinches that seem to monopolise the bird feeder. More soon...