Firebugs and a spider

These red and black bugs are called 'Fire bugs' in english and 'Gendarmes' [military soldier- the now have a blue uniform but the original uniform in the 16th century was a red velvet coat ,'soldats' [soldiers] , 'punaise au corps de feu' [bug with a firey body] and 'cherche-midi' [midday seeker] in french.

Pyrrhocoris apterus is the latin name for this bug - the red and black colours are to warn off predators. There are a lot of similarly coloured insects with similar body shapes and markings - birds quickly realise that some of these red and black bugs taste horrible so they avoid anything with the same colours.

I like these particular bugs becuase they have markings that look like African masks or painted shields.

Here is one perched on a metal fence - they look quite friendly somehow- i think its the cheery [to humans] colour scheme.

This was one on the other side of the fence climbing away from the camera. I liked seeing the underside of the beast as well as the hairs on the leaves.

A different fire bug - they seem to congregate together- there were 20 or 30 on this bushy plant- though most were out of reach of the camera.
I like the how the shiny red eyes turned out in this photo
This is a spider that was walking around our house- it wasn't very big - though the close up makes it look huge.


Pyrrhocoris apterus
fire bug
macro
firebug
spider
gendarme