See a prize-winning {photograph} of mating golden-tabbed robber flies

SMALL, fast and sometimes fleeting, it may be troublesome to catch bugs in all their miniaturised glory. But these close-up images emphasise the sweetness and intricacy of those critters in astonishing readability.

The images are from the Insect Week Pictures Competitors 2022, organised by the UK’s Royal Entomological Society as a part of its annual initiative celebrating insect science. Pete Burford scooped the highest prize for his picture, most important picture, of a pair of mating golden-tabbed robber flies (Eutolmus rufibarbis), so-named for the attribute golden tufts of hair on the underside of males. Native to the UK, they’re present in heathland within the central southern and central japanese elements of England, though they’re a scarce species.

Burford, who took up macro images two and a half years in the past, throughout one of many UK’s covid-19 lockdowns, spent a number of fruitless hours at a nature reserve just for the flies to land on his leg halfway by way of mating when he obtained residence and sat down on the couch. He managed to choose them up on a stick and seize his successful shot, entitled It Takes Two.

Pictured above is likely one of the competitors’s extremely recommended entries, taken by Benjamin Salb and exhibiting a fragile forktail damselfly (Ischnura posita), a species native to japanese North America. Reaching a most size of three centimetres, it is likely one of the smaller members of the flying insect household that features dragonflies – not that this hindered Salb. He stacked a number of photos collectively to create the sharp remaining end result.

Insect Week 2023 runs from 19 to 25 June within the UK and Europe.