I'm making progress in an unspecific way

What a Bank Holiday weekend. Amazing weather and restricted to the house and garden. What to do? Given the increasing temperatures I strangely decided to undertake manual labour and begin digging out a pond. Not my most sensible decision possibly, but lots of fun.

By close of play on Sunday I had made some headway. I need to extend one end and smooth it all out before lining with sand, underlay and a proper waterproof liner. All that may take a while but hopefully this time next year it will be ready to accept visitors.

I have had the Emperor moth lure out 3 times this year and not a sausage on any of the occasions. So it was a weird coincidence that on Sunday morning, what should fly past and do a tour of the garden? Yep, you guessed it. Luckily I had my net on me (for dispersing beetles in the heat of the day) and then popped it in the fridge for an hour.

They never fail to take my breath away. Stunning moths and amazing to think they live in my unremarkable patch of Cambridgeshire.

Last week, I'd mowed the garden and piled up all the cuttings on one side of the compost heap. I wasn't expecting anything but in the sunny weather the pile had got very warm and dry and was absolutely crawling with beetles. Thousands of beetles.

The second most common beetle (after ptilids) was Omonadus floralis. There were 100s of them. I've only ever seen this beetle a few times before so it was odd to see so many in one place. I've got quite a few staphs still to ID but it was the scarabs that stole the show, as I've only ever had two species in the garden before.

Aphodius granarius

Aphodius fimentarius/pedullus

And this little beauty, Oxyomus sylvestris. A new one for me and one that is like decaying plant material, so seems to be in the right place.

Other new beetles were the oddly shaped Scydmaenus tarsatus and Lithocharis ochracea. I often find L. nigripennis here so it was interesting to see a few of these others turning up over the weekend samplings.

I also went tapping plum blossom over my collecting tray which elicited quite a few beetles. One particular flower gave me 3 species of seed beetle in a single tap. One of which was new.

I've not encountered Bruchidius villosus before. It apparently feeds on broom (no idea where the nearest to here is) but adults wander widely early in the season and often turn up on blossom.

I'm also continuing my patchy relationship with ptilids. This one (and yes those things at the back are its wings hence the other name of feather-winged beetles), was different to others I've seen but try as I might my dissection yield absolutely nothing and it shall remain nameless.

So all in all and in spite of everything going on in the wider world, a better than expected long weekend was had. Beetles galore and some hard manual labour.

I'll leave you with the post title inspiration...