This is the sight that greeted me as I wandered home through Dingle Park the other day.

A Sloe shieldbug (Dolycoris baccarum) had its head buried deeply into the gaps between the spines of a teasel flower head. The tiny purple flowers had finished so it wasn’t nectaring, and I would’ve thought the flower head too tough for it to be sucking plant sap, so what on earth was it doing?

This little Green shieldbug nymph (Palomena prasina), watching from a nearby grass stem (you can see it in the background of the first image), looked as confused and bemused as I was.

After a few minutes, the Parent bug backed out of its spiny possie but it didn’t move from the teasel.

This was a good opportunity to get a photo of the underside of the bug … but I never did discover what it had been doing.