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And so to the final week of the 30 days of macro photography challenge. You can see week one, week two, and week three, by clicking their names.

Day 24/30: the very next day I found another green nettle weevil on my green wheelie bin! I don’t think it’s the same one, but it was posing perfectly and in focus this time. I always want to eye in focus with invertebrate photos.

Day 25/30: something that needs its own post here. It’s a fly that’s succumbed to entomophthora fungus, a parasitic species. I was astonished to find this having read about this kind of thing before, but never expecting to see it.

Day 26/30: in my garden as the light began to fade, I spotted these shieldbug nymphs on a grass head. They’re probably green shieldbugs, even though they’re black at this stage.

Day 27/30: another evening photo, this time of a green mirid bug in some rather posh mallow flowers.

Day 28/30: nettles are great for invertebrates. This is a nursery web spider garden her nest web, which will contain her eggs before they hatch into spiderlings. Hence the name ‘nursery web.’

Day 29/30: I took some photos of a large slug eating the remains of some pigeon feathers but I opted for this one instead. I took a similar image towards the beginning of this challenge, so it felt fitting that the hedgerow-snail-shell-portal-to-another-world would be opening once more as it neared the end.

Day 30/30: I spent the morning in a very nice woodland in Hampshire for the final day of the challenge. I witnessed many inverts at a period when I couldn’t photograph them, but when I had five minutes I found this leaf beetle exploring the edge of its world.

Thanks for reading!

More macro

See week one and week two via these links.

Day 15/30: looking around my Mum’s garden in London, I was harnessing the softer evening light and hoping some insects would come and bask. Lo and behold, this large red damselfly flew over my shoulder and landed on a leaf half an arm’s length away!

Day 17/30: at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve in East Sussex, I notice peacock butterfly caterpillars racing across the concrete causeway. Somehow, this caterpillar had been hugely unlucky, with its head being trampled on by a foot or a bike. There was a bloke zipping around on an ebike that looked like a motorcycle, which may have been what squashed it. Other caterpillars did make it across, where they were headed I have no idea.

Day 18/30: the difficulty of a photo challenge each day is managing your expectations and trying to keep things simple. I took this photo of a micro-moth in my house at about 9pm or later. At first it looked like a little smudge but with the benefit of flash and a bit of editing, it has red hair like me!

Day 20/30: at lunchtime I went to a nature reserve within walking distance and found lots of damselflies gallivanting in a nettle patch. This blue damselflies were focused enough for me to get quite close and take a photo.

Day 21/30: I like this photo because the fennel leaves and stems make it look quite abstract. This is probably a meadow spittlebug, a common leafhopper. I took this one after sundown.

Thanks for reading.

More macro

Every June the Wildlife Trusts run a campaign called 30 Days Wild. The aim is to encourage people to notice nature at this special time of year and do one thing each day that connects you with the wild world around you. Last year I did #30DaysMacro, taking and posting one macro wildlife photo each day in June on Twitter. This year, I thought I’d have another go.

I’m threading it daily on Twitter:

I’m going to break the posts up into one each week. It’s actually a lot of work so blogs will be confined to this for now. Here goes!

Day 1/30: zebra jumping spider

My first encounter was with this zebra jumping spider in my garden. I got a bit lucky as it held this position and faced the camera for a good few seconds. They’re usually quite, er, jumpy! I also found some other nice subjects, though, including a mint moth (which seems very common in my garden) and a beautiful greenbottle fly.

Day 2/30: wasp beetle

In the garden again. Really pleased to find a wasp beetle in the hedge just resting on a leaf. They’re another one of those wasp-faking insects, using those terrifying colour patterns to warn any predators. I also found this ichneumon wasp (I think). That is a fairly lethal looking ovipositor protruding at the rear.

Day 3/30: snail vortex

June has been quite wet and grey so far, which is helpful for macro in some ways but not all. The snails get a lot of motivation from the wet hedges and shrubs. This caterpillar was hiding away in the aromatic chambers of a rose flower.

Day 4/30: bumblebee-mimicry

In the garden I spotted this bumblebee-mimic hoverfly on the fence. I’d seen them a couple of days ago duelling over territory, but they were too energised then to get a photo. This one was nice and chilled. It’s nice seeing all those yellow pollen grains, though I’m not sure which flower produced them. The caterpillar here may be the one that was taking shelter the previous day.

Day 5/30: wasp cleaning antennae

Guess where? Garden again! Another cloudy day but quite warm so the insects were out and about. I got quite close to this wasp which was giving its antennae a good clean.

Day 6/30: bee phone pic

Due to work commitments/time constraints I couldn’t spend any time in my garden with dedicated macro equipment. I was walking down a main road in town and saw a nice siding of thistles in front of a housing development. Lo and behold, there was my macro photo. A white or buff-tailed bumblebee was nectaring on that lovely pink bloom.

Day 7/30: the slug ate my salvia!

A day of rain, as evidenced by the raindrops around the hoverfly. Also more motivation for the slugs and snails (who have my backing) to teach me not to plant certain things in the flower bed. The slug here was doing a rather acrobatic job of eating the salvia I planted out recently. There’s also a very soggy bumblebee, and some kind of lacewing or hoverfly larva.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!