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I took my first spring insect photos today after seeing a queen bumblebee flying around the garden. There were quite a few hoppers about, one of which I photographed:

Stenocranus minutus (Hemiptera: Delphacidae)

I’m hoping to go out and catch one because I can’t quite get enough detail in a photo, but I will be getting a new (macro) lens which should help when taking photos of small insects! I had a look on the British Bugs site but didn’t see anything which had the black mark on the wing (until Joe identified it for me on Flickr!).

Tonight’s episode of QI (now in the “F” series) had a flora and fauna theme, of which one of the topics was flea circuses. I had always thought that flea circuses were mechanical and did not use fleas, but Stephen Fry has dispelled me of my ignorance! It seems that this is a common misconception and that flea circuses did use live fleas, although there were some mechanical “flea circuses” too.