A bit of winter tussocking

A day off a couple of weeks ago meant that I could get out and do a bit of beetling. The weather has been atrocious of late, with wave after wave of heavy rain. The ground is sodden with large areas under water.

Linking up with fellow beetler, Bill we headed out to a site adjacent to the River Cam with lots of Deschampsia tussocks to search for beetles. The method is to cut the tussock at the base then place it upside down over a sieve and bucket. Then whack the **** out of it.

All the inverts spending the winter in the tussock should be evicted and come to rest at the bottom of your bucket! You can then stick the tussock back in the hole you took it from and it should regrow...

There were literally thousands of beetles and other inverts in the few tussocks we whacked. Beetle-wise it was almost entirely carabids (Pterostichus, Acupalpus, Bembidion, Clivina, Badister, Demetrias, Amara) and staphs (Stenus, Philonthus, Quedius, Tasgius, Rugilus, Xantholinus, Tachyporus, Aleochs).

There were only a couple of hemipterans including this Tingis ampliata which was a new species for me.