Up close and personal in Sicily

I recently went to the sunny island of Sicily.  Whilst we were there trying to tolerate roasting temperatures of 28C the UK was shivering with just 30C.  I took my trusty Olympus macro lens of course, and it was very useful.

One of the insects we wanted to see on the trip was the Violet Carpenter Bee.  These are pretty chunky things and not only did we see one, but I got close enough to photograph it.  It was covered in pollen from other flowers, which gave it a lovely golden sheen.  When it flew off right past my ear it was very noisy!

Another impressive insect was the Asian Hornet.  There were quite a few drinking at a lily pond in the Botanic gardens in Catania.  Here, as for obvious reasons I didn’t want to get too close, I used my Panny 40-150 lens at 150mm.  Not the sharpest lens, but it’s nice and light for travelling with.

The final critter isn’t an insect but a spider.  It’s a really cute Harlequin Jumping Spider captured with the Olympus macro again.  It was waving those hairy palps around like it was signalling in semaphore.  We saw it again a bit later and it had caught a small fly.  I’m guessing the fly didn’t share my cuteness description!

I suppose the message is that holidays aren’t only for views, they are also for the smaller things.