CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Coffee bar blues ️

Next to my office in the Elsässer Labor at @mpi_astro on the Königstuhl in the late afternoon yesterday.

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Now this one's trickier. Just a few millimetres in length, it's very likely a metallic flea beetle in the Alticini tribe & the Phyllotreta genus.

But is it P. cruciferae, the crucifer flea beetle (Grünglänzender Kohlerdfloh in ) or P. nigripes (Blauseidiger Kohlerdfloh in )?

The dimpled shell suggests the former, the all-black antennae the latter. Hmm.

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Second, a mason bee of the Osmia genus, also enjoying the sun & sage.

I couldn't get very close before it flew off, so the picture isn't great. And while I'm tending towards a female Osmia cornuta, the European orchard bee (Gehörnte Mauerbiene in ), it could be O. bicolor, red-tailed mason bee.

The length of the antennae favour the former though, IMHO.

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Warm & sunny on this Baden-Württemberg state election day – my wife is working at the local polling station, but as I'm not a German citizen, I can't vote or help out ‍️

So I'm in the garden, watching the arthropods

First up, a familiar friend, a peacock butterfly (Aglais io), which decided to pose nicely on the sage bush

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And a bonus bug from this afternoon’s ride – some western honey bees (Apis mellifera) out in the warm sunshine

It was one of many such bees taking advantage of the flowering willows along the edge of the Fiuschkinderstube pond between Edingen & Neckarhausen

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Just to confirm yesterday's sighting, a pair of peacock butterflies (Aglais io; Tagpfauenauge in ) were out again today in the warm sunshine, feeding off some early flowers.

Here's one of them soaking up the photons on some ivy. They tend to be among the earliest butterflies to emerge after wintering-over.

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The lunatics have taken over the asylum 🤪

A rather heavily processed photo of the Moon seen through flash-illuminated thin cloud blowing across the top of the Königstuhl this evening

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