Mini-dramas

The obsession that natural history documentaries have with large animals (mostly mammals) means that most most of us forget the dramas that take place all around us thousands of times a day.

The sequence of images below were taken just after I’d bought my first proper macro lens. I was looking for insects in a bit of woodland near where I lived at the time and my eyes were drawn to the figwort plants that were growing near a shallow ditch. The leaves of these plants had been nibbled pretty comprehensively and the culprits – Cionus weevil larvae – were soon spotted.

Buzzing about the figwort plants were lots of wasps – mostly small parasitoids around the weevil pupae, but also some larger Symmorphus gracilis that were taking nectar from the figwort flowers and hovering around the leaves.

It turned out that were wasps weren’t only there for nectar:

This whole thing was over in less than a minute and it was memerising to watch. From that point on I’ve been in love with macro-photography as a way of documenting smaller animals and capturing the fascinating, fleeting interactions like this that unfold all around us.