David

Common red soldier beetle feeding on a yarrow flower. They are indeed quite common at the height of summer, and mainly coloured red. They are vegetarian in diet, and don’t go around in armies. Their red colouration isn’t even very much like the scarlet of one-time uniforms.

A staghorn sunac growing in a front garden. The freshly opened flowers beginning to change from their initial green to the deep, dark red which they will become.

A patch of bird dropping on a buddleia leaf. A closer look reveals that the bird which left it, perhaps a blackbird, had eaten a hearty meal of beetles. Pieces of exoskeleton had just passed straight through.

Bright red flowers on runner beans, holding the prospect of some nice fresh veg later in the summer.

Common Nettle-Tap (Anthophila fabriciana). It’s resting on a hazel leaf here, but there was a nettle patch only a couple of feet away.

Thistle, with one of the flowers shown fully open, and another yet to open.

The open flower had attracted a couple of tiny beetles. These were common pollen beetles (Brassicogethes aeneus), which show more clearly in the heavily-cropped version of the picture.