Look at the thighs on that

I had a whole new beetle family whilst tapping a flowering dogwood on Wednesday. Melandryidae.

This is a pretty varied group but they are all apparently saproxylic, living on dead or damaged wood.  There are only 17 UK species and my first one landed with a small thump on my beating umbrella.

A male Osphya bipunctata. It looks like a soldier beetle on steroids or at least one that has done the dirty with a male Oedemera nobilis and this is the resulting offspring. Interestingly, the females look completely different and could easily be mistaken as another species.

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On my way home I popped into another site to tick a plant. I don't normally go looking for plants but as I had been given some reliable gen and as I was close by thought, 'what the heck'.

The plant was Myosurus minimus otherwise known as Mousetail, a plant in the Buttercup family. Like many arable plants it's in decline but to be honest unless you were looking particularly hard to find it, it would be very easy to overlook.

In the next field there were a few tail-enders of a population of Green-winged Orchids, whilst most had completely gone over. A nice way to end a great day out