Some carnage in the flora...
I like hover flies. They are cute and pollinate flowers. However, this can be hazardous...
This is maybe a Dasysyrphus (or Epostrophe) Somethingorothery.
Whatever it is, it didn't see Misumena Vatia coming...
Nice rose though.
And for some light relief after that traumatic scene, here are some pretty insects also on flowers, but not dying.
Some unknown flower beetle...
The daisy is pretty too...
Talking of predators though, look at this beauty - the first Devil's Coach Horse I've seen close-up in decades (or at least that I can recall!). When I was a child, we would show one of these a stalk of grass and it would attack it, impressively. Only about 35mm long, but totally bossing it here...
Another epic beetle. Not quite as scary as the above, but also not to be messed with. A female stag...
Stag beetles are pretty ponderous on land. This fat 18" carp is even more languorous in the algae-clogged end of the lake...
This toad was also taking it easy when I was digging up woodchippings with a pick ake. It somehow evaded a very sticky end, by just walking out of the mess and then ambling off under some leaves...
Finally, something I haven't seen before - a bumblebee partaking of aphid honeydew. This is honeydew from whitefly aphids on the leaves of our damson trees. The bee wouldn't keep still so the shot is rather blurry, but you can see its proboscis lapping it up, literally.
Here are the producing aphids. I spliced two pics together to show them and their excreta.
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