Bronze

It's always a red-letter day when I spot a Honeysuckle Sawfly, because we never get many here, and there have been years when I haven't found any at all. At lunchtime today I was out in the garden with the camera, being blown nearly off my feet by the same gusty wind that was bringing waves of scudding cloud across us, and changing the light from dazzling to dire and back again every couple of minutes, when a flash of gold zipped across my field of vision and I knew instantly what it was. 

I hardly dared breathe, because the sawfly was fresh and skittish, and every time I took a step towards her she retreated further into the deep rose bed - and I knew from bitter experience that if I pushed my luck too far I might easily lose her altogether. Luckily, the wind began gusting especially fiercely just as she landed on the viburnum, at which point she became too occupied in clinging desperately to her perch to worry any more about me, and I managed to edge near enough to capture a burst of close-up shots. In the first few of these the light was flat (as approved by camera club judges and the RPS) and she was this rather muted bronze colour, but then the cloud moved again, the sun emerged, and she turned into a glitter ball. 

Now, I like a shiny thing as much as the next woman, but the sunlit version of this shot had me squinting at my computer screen, and even after I'd processed it quite heavily to flatten the contrast I still didn't care for it very much. For my money this more subdued image is far easier on the eye, but I've posted the other one to my Facebook page, and I'd be interested to know if you agree with me or not.

As I pointed out in my Facebook post, sawflies aren't flies at all - which is obvious once you remember that flies are Diptera, which means two-winged, whereas this creature clearly has four. She does have a saw though, or at least a sharp ovipositor, which she'll use to cut into the honeysuckle so that she can lay her eggs within the plant tissue. Her larvae will look like small caterpillars, and if I could find any they might help me to establish which of the two near-identical Honeysuckle Sawfly species (Abia lonicerae or Abia aenea) I'm hosting here, but I've never come across one yet and I doubt that this year will be any different.

I can easily visualise this extraordinary insect as a piece of decoration on a bronze art nouveau table lamp - and now that I've had this thought, I really want that lamp!