The man who loved tractors

Last weekend, the sun was shining and I had a yearning to be outside. My oldest son and I decided to go and have a looked at the water levels along the Ouse Washes and to take a walk along on the foot paths that follows this large fen drainage channel.

The water was high. According to one local we bumped into it was the highest it had been for over a decade.

There was plenty of flood debris at the edges but in all honesty it looked devoid of life having been there since before Christmas. I stuck a few hand fulls in a plastic bag and then carried on on the walk, enjoying the crisp air and sun on my face.

    

When I got home a poked around in the debris for 20 minutes only to find a single Helophorus species.  With no sign of anything else in there I decided to stick the stuff in my homemade extractor on the off chance that I'd missed a beetle.

This set up was recommended on the Beetles of Britain and Ireland Facebook page. It's basically a sieve on a bucket which I the cover with a piece of perspex. I left the whole thing outside and promptly forgot about it for 48 hours. 

When I remembered to check on the contents I found to my amazement 20-30 Helophorus beetles crawling around plus this amazing looking 3.5mm staph.

I knew it was an Oxytelinid and had assumed it was a Carpelimus. But the single long furrow in the middle of the pronotum IDs it as a Platystethus species.

A quick keying out swiftly took me to Platystethus nodifrons. The shape of the scutellum with the depressed sides clinching the final couplet. I think it's my new favourite staph. It looks like an armored monster. 

I couldn't quite believe all those beetles were still in the debris sample. Must try and use the extraction method more often. 

All this talk of extractors got me thinking about one of my favourite jokes during my 20s. See here for this pinnacle of human comedy.

Enjoy!