This week, I took an evening walk with number one son along the Great Ouse. Mostly just for a bit of exercise, but I did take my small sweep net and aimed it at a few bits of riverside vegetation. Looking at the contents of one sweep I saw a largish flea beetle that I didn't immediately recognise except to know that I was pretty sure I hadn't seen it before. I potted it and a couple of other things to look at on my return home.
Later on, peering down the microscope I saw this.
The thighs screamed 'flea beetle' at me but try as I might, I could not pin it down to genus. The double tarsal spikes looked like a good clue but despite several attempts to key and also picture match I was going round in circles. Frustrated I stuck it on Twitter and tagged those more experienced than me. Within 5 mins I had an answer. Scirtes hemisphaericus (Thanks Adrian 👍).
It's not a leaf beetle but a Scirtid! I was looking at the wrong bloody family. This species lives on emergent vegetation along rivers and the edges of lakes and is reasonably common. Those long spurs are the give away that it's not a leaf beetle. I won't be making that mistake again...
In the same sweep was a beetle that I did recognise as a Scirtid. This one was a species of Cyphon and had elytral ridges (which you can make out in the image below) that narrowed it down to a couple of species.
This one is Cyphon coarctatus, a common and widespread species.
In other wildlife news, as I was staring at the pond first thing this morning I noticed a largish butterfly sat on my potatoes. I walked over for a better look and it moved to sun itself on a nearby field maple. I was rather surprised to see a Silver-washed Fritillary. Not a species I would have necessarily predicted to record here, but they have been expanding in range. I grabbed a horrendous record shot with the only camera I had on me, my phone.
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