Lots in a little

Have you ever been to England's smallest county, Rutland? You may have done without noticing, because if you're bowling along the A1 Great North Road, it flashes by. It used to be the piece in our Counties of Great Britain jigsaw which always got lost, along with the smaller part of Flint. Anyway, it has a very good motto: Multum in parvo, or 'A lot in a little'.

That applies to insects too, and my initial thought that there were none in the trap this morning, after rain, cold and a power cut seven minutes before the end of The Apprentice, was quite wrong. A closer look revealed these two residents, the top one doing its own version of a handstand and the other, I fear, an ex-insect, dead. It looks in repose, doesn't it, like one of those effigies on a mediaeval church tomb?

What they are, must await the attentions of a passing dipterist or fly expert, but even in my wobbly hands the wonders of digital macro reveal how complex and interesting such minutiae are. I still pine for moths, mind. It can't be long before they, and the warmer weather, return.