you ain't seen nothing, right?

Time to play spot the octopus! The grains of sand in the background should provide a useful comparison to show how tiny this fella was. My first thought on seeing an octo this small in the indo-pacific region was that it might be a blue ring. It isn't, and I think the closest I can come is the Bock's pygmy octo complex. Of course it could just be a baby of a large species

This night dive was pretty special as we saw all 4 of the commonly seen cephalopod types (squid, bobtail, octopus and cuttlefish) on a single dive. Spotting these little octopuses is hard but they tend to give themselves away by moving whilst camouflaged creating a sort of magic-eye penny dropping moment when they seem to appear out of nowhere.

Intruder

I found this praying mantis crawling up my stairs a couple of weeks ago. He's not as nicely patterned as the last mantis I featured and was rather small so not as menacing as he looks here. Anyway I took a few shots and put him in the garden. I haven't been able to establish how big my local mantids get so will be looking out for a few bigger ones to see.

This little chap would struggle to knock over a cricket but I've recently been reading about mantids targetting hummingbird feeders and passerines in mist nets. Now this would be a mantis I wouldn't want to run into on the stairs.

Flight of the bumblebee

Well actually they weren't flying much just kind of drunkenly stumbling from flower to flower on this California sage in the blamy environs of the Eden Project:

Bumblebees are, as I'm sure you know, important pollinators and as such something to be encouraged. Unfortunately here in the UK some species are declining.

More info here at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Dragonfly

This chap crawled out of our pond a few days ago along with a few friends. Apparently they are Southern Hawkers (Aeshna cyanea).

We've been finding nymphs in the pond for the past couple of years but this is the first time I've seen them emerge and worked out what they are. It also explains where our tadpoles are going.

I watched this one crack its larval casing and inflate its wings over the course of a couple of hours before flying off. Well worth the price of a few tadpoles.

Butterfly lovin'

I spent a fair amount of time recently photographing insects - especially butterflies (there's more to come). I felt slightly voyeuristic zooming in on what I assume is a tender moment between these two.

The inner wing surface on these (ie the bit not shown on this photo) is a beautiful powder blue so I assumed they were a type of blue. [Edited to coorect id] My limited research (ok - a trip to http://www.bogbumper.blogspot.com/ yesterday) suggested they were in fact a pair of Brown Argus, however a bit more research revealed the Brown Argus is in fact (unsurprisingly) brown although its underside looks similar to the above. These are Common Blues.

You bring the ice cream....

...I'll bring the jelly:

Unidentified jelly - Egyptian Red Sea