..with a green tiger beetle (Cicindela campestris) in the Yorkshire Dales.
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..with a green tiger beetle (Cicindela campestris) in the Yorkshire Dales.
Mating Nettle Weevils - Phyllobius pomaceus, female nibbling on plant, male nibbling tenderly on her.
a new species for me, found mainly on moors and heaths. This was from the Brecon Beacons.
mating pair, pausing long enough for a quick stacking exercise on my part.
What is it that makes one species rarer than other apparently very similar ones? That was the question that came into my head when my son Tom and I found a single female blue ground beetle (Carabus intricatus), one of the rarest ground beetles in the UK found only in a few ancient woodlands in Devon, Cornwall and one site in south Wales. It’s restricted to a rare habitat, but there are dozens of such places where the beetle is absent. It feeds mainly on a few species of slug associated with these woodlands, but again the prey species are to be found far more widely in the UK. To make matters more complicated, the same species of beetle is much commoner throughout continental Europe including dry habitats and gardens, so it can’t be that it needs the humidity of temperate rainforests. It also appears to need a ground layer of moss and leaf litter, and can’t cope with bramble for example, so it was disappointing to find that despite recommendations from Buglife among others that this nature reserve has become overgrown on the forest floor with bramble, presumably the reason why we could only find one individual, and suggesting that this particular population may well go extinct soon.
Yorkshire Dales
He'll hate me for doing this, but my entomologist son Tom, who can spot a beetle from 100 paces, is on BBC TV's Countryfile this coming Sunday 5th November at 5.15pm. He's showing them some of the interesting minibeasts at Oxford university's Wytham Woods. Filming took place in the middle of storm Babet! This local speciality, the rugged oil beetle, is one of the stars. Link to preview here - Tom is at the start with Ellie www.countryfile.com/countryfile-tv-show/where-is-countryf...
the blue-edged form which only occurs in the north of the UK and not in the south apparently, lacking the violet edging.
a couple more from the New Forest, Hampshire
A minotaur beetle (Typhaeus typhoeus) feeding on a devil's fingers fungus (Clathrus archeri) in the New Forest, Hampshire. Mmmm, scrummy!
I watched this newly emerged adult male minotaur beetle home in on a devil's fingers from around a metre away using its antennae. Having climbed aboard it proceeded to have a nibble at the 'arms' of the fungus, presumably acting as a vector for the fungal spores that are in the black goo on the arms.
A stacked image
Very happy to see one from the UK's only known population.
Having seen some Dutch ones at the start of this year, my son Tom found several in probably its only UK site today - this one was especially brightly coloured.
among lichen, Studland Heath NNR
rapdily declining and now classified as endangered in the UK, this one from Oxfordshire - a prime example of an animal that was taken for granted through to the millennium, and is now a cause for concern.
Yorkshire Dales
Dorset, UK
