Spotting chafers
We’re walking in the heat through pungent herbs, surrounded by butterflies and day-flying moths with Lesser Kestrels overhead. We’re in Matera in the south of Italy.
I particularly adore these large and very pale long-stalked dandelion-like flowers. I’ve still not identified them:
![Matera - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Matera-The-Hall-of-Einar-7319.jpg)
I find them ever-so-slightly hypnotic:
![Matera - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Matera-The-Hall-of-Einar-7322-725x725.jpg)
One has a Mediterranean Spotted Chafer Oxythyrea funesta on it:
![Mediterranean Spotted Chafers - Matera - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Matera-The-Hall-of-Einar-6350-725x483.jpg)
We saw them here last year:
Here’s another:
![Mediterranean Spotted Chafers - Matera - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Matera-The-Hall-of-Einar-6351.jpg)
They are busy everywhere here, clinging to flowers:
![Mediterranean Spotted Chafers - Matera - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Matera-The-Hall-of-Einar-6352-725x483.jpg)
I don’t think I’ll be doing much flower photography today. It’ll be beetle photography instead:
![Mediterranean Spotted Chafers - Matera - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Matera-The-Hall-of-Einar-6388-725x483.jpg)