garden visitors
Sometimes, you can find a whole other world right outside your kitchen window.
One morning, as I walked past the flowerbed outside our kitchen window, I spotted this marvellously coloured grasshopper. The green really stood out against the orange flowers, and the insect looked so yummy that I was surprised that no one had eaten it yet. I wasn’t going to, obviously, since I’m a vegetarian.
I grabbed my camera and my flash and decided to see how close I could get.
A handsome grasshopper.
Busy morning traffic.
It was the grasshopper that caught my interest, but it didn’t move at all, so I decided to see what this visiting bee was up to instead. By this time, I had already forgotten that I was actually going somewhere past the flowerbed on my way out – the world of interesting insects and their intriguing interactions managed to swallow me whole.
The bee was an unlucky one. In the photo above, you can see it approaching the flower with hope and hunger in its eyes. A moment later, it saw that a giant (from its perspective) green monster of a grasshopper had already made that particular flower its own. Fortunately, it was a flowerbed, with dozens of big, beautiful blossoms.
It almost looked like the protective spirit of the flower showed up to scare the bee away when this white spider crept out of the depths of orange petals. Eat, be eaten, or both?
A fraction of a second later…
As I said, unlucky bee. It left the flowerbed hungry, but at least it was still alive!
After all this drama, another much calmer visitor appeared.
A big beauty, perhaps a Southern Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides feisthamelii)?
Seemingly untouched by the drama and bullying happening on the other flowers, this large insect knew exactly what it wanted, and took it. Now I’m anthropomorphizing heavily, but it’s a well-known characteristic of my own species, so I can’t help it.
The butterfly was a bit camera shy, but allowed me to get this photo of it having a drink:
At the bar. I love the way it looks like it’s standing on its back legs! (Just to continue the anthropomorphizing…)
At some point, the world I had been swallowed into spat me out and left me wondering why I was lying around on the ground outside the kitchen window. I guess my colour wasn’t tasty-looking enough. I admit, it’s a bit boring…
alternative viewpoints 
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Great shots and story. What a great reminder of the whole other world that lives right around us but we often miss. I particularly enjoyed the colours on the first photo.
Yes, there’s a lot of stuff going on around us that is very interesting but not obvious at all. It’s always rewarding to find a piece of that.
Thanks a lot for your comment!