Thursday 17 May 2012

Lots in a little


Have you ever been to England's smallest county, Rutland? You may have done without noticing, because if you're bowling along the A1 Great North Road, it flashes by. It used to be the piece in our Counties of Great Britain jigsaw which always got lost, along with the smaller part of Flint. Anyway, it has a very good motto: Multum in parvo, or 'A lot in a little'.


That applies to insects too, and my initial thought that there were none in the trap this morning, after rain, cold and a power cut seven minutes before the end of The Apprentice, was quite wrong. A closer look revealed these two residents, the top one doing its own version of a handstand and the other, I fear, an ex-insect, dead. It looks in repose, doesn't it, like one of those effigies on a mediaeval church tomb?

What they are, must await the attentions of a passing dipterist or fly expert, but even in my wobbly hands the wonders of digital macro reveal how complex and interesting such minutiae are. I still pine for moths, mind. It can't be long before they, and the warmer weather, return.

2 comments:

Ray Walton said...

This is my first ever attempt at an identification.
The Circus artist looks like a Cranefly - (Tipula Lateralis)
You Entomologists out there. Please be lenient on me if I have completely got that wrong!

MartinWainwright said...

Hi there and many thanks - I'm sure you're right. aka a Daddy Long-legs which I should have recognised, though it seems a bit smaller than the ones I remember from my childhood. Mind you, I was smaller then...

I like this bit from a website on crane flies which I just visited:

"Crane flies are among the animals which cause the most panic in a bedroom, apart from probably spiders"

all v best and thanks

M

PS Now for the fly...