Two new ticks from the garden

It would be a lie to say that I've had mixed results with moth pheromone lures. Until this year I've never had any success at all except for a brief encounter with a Yellow-belted Clearwing down the bottom of the garden last year.

I now suspect that I may have had some duff lures as this year's new crop are performing much better. First up was the Emperor moth lure and recently I've been trying the others (with actual mixed results this time).

Yesterday, I tried putting out the CUL lure for Large Red-belted Clearwing and within 5 minutes had a clearwing come in and circle the lure. I netted and potted and the moth but when I looked at it more closely it was a Red-belted Clearwing, not it's larger cousin. God knows what will happen when I put out MYO lure for that species, might end up with a dodo....

Anyway, it was a new species for me and brilliant to finally get a good look at a clearwing.

A male Red-belted Clearwing

The other new species in the garden yesterday was one that I can't believe I haven't seen before, the pretty common, Malthodes minimus. One of the soldier beetles, it looks more like a parasitic wasp or fly on a cursory glance, with the wings and abdomen sticking out far beyond the tips of the elytra. Males of this genus are relatively straigtforward to key out if you examine the end sternites and tergites (final bottom and top bits of the abdomen).

Key to the genus available here