u/Bug_Photographer

Here is a pair of violet tanbark beetles (Callidium violaceum) busy with each other aand also displaying the truly intense blue colour some of them have.

This species actually come in two colours - this deep blue and also a more turquiose hue.

For links to a couple of more shots of this couple and one to a photo of the other colour form plus technical details on what camera/lens/settings were used, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55527743691/

On a common yarrow (Achillea millefolium), this is a female hoverfly known as Helophilus pendulus. It is sometimes known as the sun fly which I suspect comes from someone seing "Helophilus" and thinking it said "Heliophilus" where "Helios" means sun. But without the "i", Helophilus would translate more into "marsh-lover". "Pendulus" on the other hand could be translated into hovering.

Another common name for this one in the UK is "The footballer" because the striped black and yellow thorax being associated with football jerseys (I think Watford FC and Hull City have black and yellow jerseys?).

For details on camera/lens/settings used for the shot plus links to five more photos of this one, have look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55515715866/

So here we have red eyes on a 3rd instar nymph of the green shieldbug (Palomena prasina) on a red great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) on its green stem.

If only I had manage to set up a red background...

Details on camera/lens/settings used can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55515715896/

A sleeping female vagrant darter (Sympetrum vulgatum), also known as the moustached darter on a thistle at the Hemmesta sjöäng wetland early in the morning when all the dew of the night still shimmer like tiny diamonds on her.

This one had a damaged wing so I'm not sure how well she could fly, but I didn't wake her up so I don't find out.

For exact location and technical details on camera/lens/settings used, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/49860305871/

This green-veined white (Pieris napi) was looking pretty on a thistle and since it has two black spots per forewing, we can say it is a female.

I wouldn't call this a focus stack, but it's a composite of two shots since I took two, each one with one beetle more in focus so I put them together in Photoshop.

The beetle in question is a leaf beetle which doesn't have an English name, but the scientific name is Plagiosterna aenea. They feed on alder leaves and can be quite numerous and shimmer like little jewels on the leaves. I found this couple in the Mjällådalen nature reserve about 40 km / 25 miles from Härnösand, Sweden.

For details on camera/lens/settings used for this shot, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55483845075/

This little cutie is a red wasp (Vespula rufa) which I found chilling on the railing of the wooden Peter Norberg's bridge which crosses the steam in the Mjällådalen nature reserve about 40 km / 25 miles from Härnösand, Sweden.

For exact location plus details on camera/lens/settings used for the shot, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55483845050/

Photographing hawker dragonflies can be a bit difficult. They are so adept at flying that they rarely need to land at all. They even eat their prey on the wing.

Laying eggs is one of the exceptions and that is exactly what this female blue hawker (Aeshna cyanea), aka the southern hawker, was doing when I found her. She was circling the garden pond and making short stops on rocks and moss around the edge to deposit her eggs.

This is a bit of an odd colour scheme for a "blue" hawker - but the name stems from the colouration of the male which is more blue. The Swedish name, blågrön mosaikslända, eliminates this problem as it translates into "blue-green mosaic dragonfly" drawing from both male and female.

For details on camera/lens/settings used plus a link to a second shot of the same dragon, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55477927612/

This rather gorgeous butterfly is a male scarce copper (Lycaena virgaureae) which I found on a tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) on the side of a small logger road outside Härnösand, Sweden in July.

The Dutch name for this species however is "morgenrood" which translates into morning red - as in the red of the sun at dawn.

I've discovered that the dill flowers attract a lot of hoverflies like this female pale-saddled Leucozona (Leucozona glaucia) which makes for easy shooting as the dill is about as high as I am tall.

And as an added bonus, everything smells just wonderful of dill!

For details on camera/lens/settings used for the shot plus exact location where it was taken, please look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55462138624/

The scientific name for this nice and fairly large longhorn beetle is Lepturobosca virens. It lacks an English name, but translating the Swedish one (grön blombock) gives us "green flower longhorn". This particular one was muching pollen on a meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria).

When I closed in there were a whole bunch of flies, including several hoverflies around it, but they all soon left, leaving the beetle alone in front of the lens.

For links to five more shots of this guy plus details on camera/lens/settings used for the shot, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55436375097/

I celebrated my mom's birthday this Sunday at her summer house in Värmdö located in the inner archipelago of Stockholm, Sweden.

With the weather being sort of cloudy, we went for a walk around the neighbourhood and ended up in a very small island (connected by bridge) where we sometimes go for a swim. The others stood in a group and talked whil I snuck around hoping to find something interesting to photograph.

And did I. By now, the clouds had parted and there was full on sun and there, on this dark lichen-covered rockside angled perfectly towards the sun (ie, the hottest place there) I spotted a large dragonfly which just landed!

Engaging my finest ninja-sneak mode, I crept/climbed closer and took a photo every time I got a little closer until it took off and disappeared over the tall reeds.

Looking closer at my photos, I realised I hade photographed a lesser emperor (Anax parthenope)!

The "lesser" here doesn't mean this is a small species - it's just smaller than the blue emperor (A. imperator) which is Sweden's largest species.

This is my first emperor dragonfly of any kind and it's a very new speceis for Sweden with the first specimen spotted in the country as late as 2010. It has spread up along the east coast and the Stockholm archipelago is about as far north as they have gotten these days.

For exact location plus details on camera/lens/settings used, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55423065953/

Among the various visitors on the grape hyacinths (Muscari sp.) in front of the house back in late April, this is a male large bee-fly (Bombylius major).

For details on camera/lens/settings used for this shot plus links to another shot of him and one of the female, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55413830530/

A bonus catch when looking for dune tiger beetles in the Nedre Mjällådalen nature reserve near Härnösand, Sweden, was this male woodland jumping spider (Evarcha falcata) with its emerald green eyes which helpfully jumped onto a twig which was lying in the sand.

I only managed a couple of shots (this one is at 2:1 mag) before he decided to teleport away out of sight like they do.

For details on camera/lens/settings used for the shot plus exact location (down to a couple of meters), please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55409226938/

I was standing on grassy ground growing out over water at the Nedre dammen pond in Tyresta National Park, trying to photograph a dragonfly while also very much trying to not fall into the water when this male fen raft spider (Dolomedes plantarius) came running over the water and stopped in the grass right next to my feet.

This is only my second find of this species which is the largest spider species in Sweden so I was very pleased with him being totally cool with me being there. I had to fold away the long grass to get the camera down to him and didn't move at all. I even had time for a lens change to get a couple of shots with the MP-E65 lens as well before being satisfied.

With this being a guy, the abdomen is way smaller than on the females, but otherwise this was absolutely a full-grown adult

There is a small risk this is a raft spider (D. fimbriatus), but I'm still leaning towards plantarius.

For details on camera/lens/settings plus exact location, please look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55406588816/

Here are two shots of of a ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus) which was chilling on the leaf of a heartleaf ox-eye (Telekia speciosa) in my mother-in-law's garden on a July (of 2026) visit.

The ringlet is quite possibly the most common butterfly in Sweden - and yet most people are completely unaware of it's existence which is a shame as despite their very basic colouration, they are quite beautiful.

Details on camera/lens/settings used for the shot can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55406588836/

I'm spending a couple of weeks in Härnösand, fairly far north in Sweden, about 3 km / 2 miles from where Hernö Gin have their destillery, but today I stumbled on a bottle of gin from Barsebäck Bränneri in the south of Sweden. Supposedly, this one has notes of cardamom and bay leaf.

The labeling is double-sided and the shape of the bottle and the vertical stripes is possibly a reference to what Barsebäck is most known for in Sweden - the nuclear power plant with its square cooling towers.

I found this female four-banded flower bee (Anthophora quadrimaculata) geting in early before the European wool carder bees (Anthidium manicatum) claim it.

The carder bee males are erxtremely protective of "his" plant and will chase this one away wihout hesitation, but today, the carder bees hadn't gotten there so this one was zipping around from flower to flower.

For details on camera/lens/settings used for this shot, pleas have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55387083331/

You're looking at a female Welsh clearwing (Synanthedon scoliaeformis) in the process of laying her eggs on a birch tree.

This is a diurnal moth and like all clearwings, it is mimicking wasps. While most of them try to look like eusocial wasps and hornets, this one instead mimicks scoliid wasps (ie mammooth wasps).

She certainly took her time ovipositing - in fact, I took a whole bunch of shots before leaving her to photograph other stuff and when I returned, she was still at it. This species lay their eggs on the birch and when the egg hatch, the caterpillars burrow into the tree and live inside it between the bark and the wood for 2-3 years before emerging as adults.

If you zoom in on the head, you'll notice that the white marking isn't part of the eye even tough it looks a bit like the moth has manga eyes or something.

Also, the way she has bent her abdomen here, make me think she looks a bit like a shrimp, no?

For technical details for the shot plus exact location, please have a look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/55375477651/