I found a fourth Harlequin lady bug pupa last week. When I checked this morning I found it had hatched. I carefully snipped the twig off the Hawksbeard weed and took it into the flat. Clamped it and got some macro shots.

With the 8 x dioptre lens on the Tamron 90mm it is possible to get 2 times life-size. It was a rather expensive German lens, but well worth the money.

The old pupa case was there and I expect the bug was waiting for the sun to warm things up a little before it took off.

When I had ended my 'portraiture' session I carefully took the hatchling back out and transferred it to the Virginia Creeper, it straight away shuffled round to the underside of the leaf. .