They talk of days for which they sit and wait

It's the end of 2021. That came quickly! 

I've not posted much recently despite meaning to write about some of the trips I've done this year looking for beetles. The last week or so I've been knocked down by some horrendous lurgy, although not Covid as all the tests have told me, I've had no energy, a hacking cough and aching joints. Pretty rubbish really.

Anyway, feel I might be on the mend now so time for a post before year's end but one that won't be laying down any gauntlets for my future self as they never quite pan out as expected. My beetling has continued apace again although in a different and more varied way from 2020. I visited several new habitats and managed some intense patches of beetling but I've definitely been more focused.

I've now seen and identified about 950 species in the UK. I thought I might get to the big 1K this year but the final quarter of the year has been busy with other stuff so that hasn't happened but will do soon.

So I'll keep going in 2022 and have a few things planned; beetles I want to see and places I want to visit.

But before all that I just wanted to get down in blog form, a trip that I did earlier in the year. And also to remind me that warmer days are on their way again,

Back in June I had a day trip to coastal Essex to visit the RSPB reserve at Wallasea. This reserve was created when three million tonnes of earth were brought by boat from the tunnels and shafts created by the Crossrail scheme in London. This meant that the land was raised above sea level and the soil was laid down in a way that created a new 115-hectare intertidal area of saltmarsh, islands and mudflats. 

Driving out there definitely gives you that feeling of heading through bandit country towards the edge of the world. The sun was hot, the reserve was quiet and the number of birds was staggering.

I was there to help survey various parts of the reserve and we ended up sampling several subtly different habitats, yielding lots of new beetles for me.

Sweeping the verge-side vegetation around the car park and especially targeting sea beet turned up the wonderfully odd weevil Lixus scabricollis. Discovered new to Britain in 1987 at a site in West Kent it has now spread to several sites in the south. One of those species that drops as soon as you get anywhere near it.

Suction sampling sea spurrey turned up a few individuals of the weevil Sibinia arenariae. A rather pretty little, sandy colored thing with interesting patterning.

There were lots of Anthicid beetles running around on the bare mud on the salt marsh pretty much everywhere we looked. The less frequent of the two species found was Cordicollis instabilis, the males being easy to identify in the field with their splayed tibia and rather square heads.

The more common species was Cyclodinus constrictus which must have been present in the thousands given how many I saw whilst down on my hands and knees. The elytra have 4 pale reddish spots that aren't always so obvious especially in the field.

I finally got to see Bombadier beetles Brachinus crepitans for only the second time, after seeing them on my first ever beetling trip out back in 2014. They were bigger than I had remembered and varied a bit in elytra colour too.

This weevil caused me some head scratching but at 4.2mm and with deeply forked scales on the elytra and femora I assumed it must be a very pale Hypera postica, which was then happily confirmed by Mark Gurney. I'm getting to quite like weevils now and am even getting through the apions.....

I don't find pselaphids very often so it's always pleasing to do so especially when it's a whole new genus. There were several of these Brachygluta suctioned from amongst the saltmarsh vegetation. With it's tibia spurs making this one a male and a modification to the 1st visible tergite plus long hairs on the head this keyed (with a bit of help) to B. helferi unsurprisingly a saltmatsh specialist.

A new Quedius for me in the shape of Q. schatzmayri, and in the subgenus Raphirus with the big eyes and indented labrum. Aedeagus is distinctive too. Staphs really are the best beetles 😀

I also managed a new species of Bembidion from the mud and in between the numerous Tachys scutellaris. This one is Bembidion ephippium and is pretty distinctively colored. I also found B. normannum and B. minimum.

Finally, as this is just turning into one long photo montage, the muddy estuary edges yielded lots of male Bledius, in fact I didn't find a single female all day. When I got them home I found that they split into two distinctive groupings with both having the long pronotal projections. Having side by side comparisons made it so much more easier to get IDs. Left hand individual is Bledius frisius (formerly spectabilis (eg in Lott)) and on the right is Bledius spectabilis (formerly limicola) and the aedeagi backed me up. Confused? Yep, it's a bit of a head scratcher.

Right, enough of saltmarsh beetles. I may try and do another post from last summer next week but apart from that it'll all be 2022! To the tiny number of readers of this blog I wish you a very Happy New Year and may the coming year bring you everything you hope for.

The post title comes from my favourite Led Zeppelin song, Kashmir. My 13 year old son has independently (of me) just discovered them so I was taking a trip down memory lane today whilst making meatballs. Enjoy.

We can beat the sun as long as we keep moving

Trevor James was a bit of a natural history legend. He was Hertfordshire's long-time recorder for flora and beetles and an outstanding all-round naturalist. He produced the epic book Beetles of Hertfordshire which is the county account against which all others are and will be measured, all so far falling well short.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Trevor and he sadly died last year. You can read an obituary here. Whilst browsing Pemberley books recently I discovered that some of Trevor's beetle library was being sold off. I managed to pick up a couple of out of print books that I had been looking for, these particular ones having the added bonus of having been Trevor's and containing his book plates.

I quite like the idea that books pass between people with similar interests and through them a connection of sorts is made. If looked after, I could conceivably pass them on again when I shuffle off this mortal coil, which is both a reassuring thing and also an alarming one, as there are still bloody loads of beetles still to see!

The post title comes from this absolutely belter from Maximo Park. Very few people capture a story in a pop song the way Paul Smith does.

  

Stay out super late tonight

So back in May (and it now seems like a lot longer ago) I spent a few days up on Anglesey in north west Wales. The reason: to do some water beetle surveys as part of my RSPB sabbatical. 

What? (I hear you say)....... well, after 5 years continuous work at the RSPB you are allowed a sabbatical, to gain new skills or put your current ones to some other use for the organisation. It's a great thing to have and I'd been fantasising about mine since I started. However, Covid got in the way of my original plans of something on one of the Scottish Islands and so rather than delay I decided to make the most of what other opportunities there were.  Hence some time on Anglesey, learning about water beetle assemblages and trying to add to the knowledge of one particular site.

That bit will be for another day/post once I finish the samples but whilst there we stayed at South Stack reserve, somewhere I hadn't visited since the summer of 1982. Things had changed and moved on since then, both for the reserve and for me.

There's a great new visitor centre just opened. Well worth a visit.

It's an amazing spot and on the whole we were really lucky with the weather. Plenty of sun (plus a bit of rain). There was a bit of opportunity to do some beetling on the reserve in between other work to try and add some invert records for the site. 

I spent a bit of time sweeping and suction sampling some of the cliff top vegetation early one morning, before the visitors arrived on mass for the seabird spectacle. There was lots to see and weevils were particular evident in the samples that I looked at. Also lots of new species for me as it is a very different habitat from the sort of stuff I normally look at in East Anglia. I also have to say that having a suction sampler was invaluable and yielded a lot of things that I just wouldn't have found through other methods.

Close cropped, cliff top vegetation.

We also had a couple of evenings out after dark, scouring the paths by torch light looking for carabids and other night time feeding beetles. This meant I was up way past my usual bed time as I am an early to bed kinda guy (but in my defence I do get up at the crack of dawn (or before at this time of year!)). Good to do every wee while though. It was just lovely to be somewhere different, a stunning location and away from my normal day-to-day life for a little bit. I also learned a lot about all sorts of things both beetle and natural history related but also more general habitat stuff.

South Stack lighthouse at sunset

Walking the paths, head down, head torch on.

Brightest of the bunch were several of the dasytid Psilothrix viridicoerulea. These are reasonably common along the coasts of southern England with scattered records further north into Wales and Norfolk. Rather splendid looking things. 

Psilothrix viridicoerulea

A new genus for me. This was the first specimen of Leiodes that I have found so far. By all accounts they can be a bit of a pain to ID but luckily I had a male which makes the whole process a little bit easier. A quick dissection ensued followed by a bit of online picture matching, 

The aedeagus closely matched the drawings in Duff vol 1 of Leiodes litura. That species however is supposed to be found in woodland or parkand. There wasn't a tree in sight here but I'm told that we know very little about the life histories of this genus apart from that they breed in truffles, so who knows what it was doing in the closely cropped vegetation on the western fringes of Wales.

This weevil was a bit of a looker and is from the genus Hypera. The bulbous pronotum, patterning of the elytra and the aedeagus identify this as Hypera plantaginis, another new species for me and another one from a genus that I have found a few of this year.

This next weevil I initially assumed to be a species of Polydrusus which I then struggled to get any further with. Turns out I was wrong and it is in fact Coelositona cambricus. The pinched back end of the pronotum is one of the key ID bits for this but I still reckon it looks more like a Polydrusus as opposed a Sitona in which genus it once sat.

I have been making much more of an effort with apionids this year and as with all things weevil, Mark Gurney's guides have helped immensely. I still groan when one appears in a sample but I now at least give them a go as opposed stick them back in the fridge for a rainy day. This one was obviously different from recent species I have been seeing and keyed reasonably easily as Catapion seniculus.

Finally, for now. I'll end with a new one from my favourite beetle family. This little fella was running around my sample tray with its abdomen in the air like a tiny pissed off Devil's Coach horse. This is the aleoch Encephalus complicans and brilliantly for one of this group easy to identify.  

The post title comes from The National's Fake Empire. A band that I was really into a decade or so ago but have to admit to having not listened to the last couple of albums they've put out. Something I should really rectify.

If you're fond of sand dunes and salty air

All the way back in May I paid a visit to the dunes at Aberffraw on Anglesey in north-west Wales with fellow beetler, Andy. 

The sun was mainly out and we spent a few hours pootling around the tussocks and dune slacks. It was one of the days where beetles were on the move and many had become trapped in the ever moving pockets of sand on the steeper, vegetation-free parts of the dunes.

Weevils were one of the most represented groups with several of the usual suspects and a few new species for me. First up was a species that I've wanted to see for a while, the slightly bizarre-looking Orobitis cyanea. Basically a tiny violet-black pea with long legs. Associated with violets in grassland and open areas, a few of these were stuck on the escalators of cascading sand.

Sitona always make me doubt myself but I think this one is Sitona lineellus. At least that's where Mark Gurney's brilliant weevil guides take me.

There were also lots of the large Sitona-like Charagmus griseus. These too had got trapped and instead of flying off just seemed to walk in a never-ending attempt to scale the ever flowing sandy dune sides.

This individual really stood out in the field and I when I pootered it I was convinced it was something else but it is just another Charagmus griseus but this time all the scales have rubbed off.

With the publication earlier this year of the new Atlas and Key to histerids, I no longer dread sitting down to key them out. It really has been a game changer for me with this group. This Hypocaccus rugiceps was a new species for me and is pretty much restricted to coastal Wales and north-west England. The new book gives it the name of The West Coast Dune-walker. 

(some of the pics are actually okay for once 😉)

I also found two new (for me) species of ladybird, both in the genus Scymnus. The first one was the easy to ID S. haemorrhoidalis. At only 2mm it really is tiny but the pattern of red on the head and pronotum, plus the red tips to the elytra make it stand out from the other species I found.....

... so this keyed using Duff to Scymnus schmidti partly due to the all black elytra. However, Mark Telfer reminded me of a recent discussion on the British Beetles email group where it was pointed out that in the UK we should stop detting schmidti (all black elytra) and frontalis (red spot on each elytron) on colour and dissect them all as there are forms on the near continent that don't conform to this rule and may occur here (either already or at some point in the future). That means that for all confirmed records a dissected beetle is needed. 

I removed the aedeagus and then put it under the compound microscope in a drop of glycerine to examine the tip.

Whilst the differences aren't huge my beetle does indeed appear to be S. schmidti and as it's the first time I've found this species pair I won't have to go back and either dissect old specimens or remove records. Bonus.

Which brings me neatly to this post's title inspiration from Groove Armada, not normally my cup of tea but it does give the air of relaxing at the beach, suction sampler in hand.....

Breaking the back of the backlog

So I said in the last post that I'd try and do some posts to cover some of the more interesting finds from this year as I go through my various batches of samples.

First up is this staph I found. It was the only one of its type in the tube and so I decided to take a closer look. It was taken in the Suffolk Brecks and when I pootered it from a tray of suction sample, I assumed it would be a Xantholinus, it had that small and sinuous look to it. It came from an area where the dry heath was transitioning into a more damp area before becoming a reedy pond edge.

A quick look and it was obvious that it didn't have the overlapping elytra and given size, tarsal shape and the fact that it has lines of six punctures on the pronotum, this was a species of Gabrius.

There are 12 species of Gabrius recorded in the UK and are initially split on the number of dorsal punctures on the pronotum. Five or six.

This has six and with it being less than 5.5mm in length leaves us with 8 species (having removed astutoides, exiguus, osseticus and splendidulus). 

The next bits in the key all relate to the aedeagus and luckily this individual was a male so I whipped it out and had a look down the microscope.

The paramere is partly visible in the above image but is bi-lobed and not rounded or emarginated. The median lobe (the main bit you can see above) is very slightly truncate at the tip and the bit that extends beyond the paramere is about equal to the length of the paramere.

This gets you to two species velox and keysianus. The narrow tip to the median lobe makes this keysianus. Brilliant, except that when i look at the text for that species in Lott and Anderson it says that this species is found on south and west coasts from Kent to Galloway on sandy pond margins by the coast. Nowhere near west Suffolk!

So I had a look on NBN and it turns out that Steve Lane found a small number of these at a site in Norfolk back in 2014 so it would seem that this species is present but probably not in too many places. This individual may well have been moving away from the pond edge towards somewhere a bit safer to hold up for the winter. A nice species to find and to add a tiny bit of knowledge to its distribution.  Also looks like this may be a first for Suffolk too.

The NBN map for Gabrius keysianus. Note lone East Anglian dot.

Three new bugs

A trip into Suffolk today was hard work. The change in weather and cooler temperatures meant that beetles were few and far between. Sheep dung ended up being the most productive with five species of Aphodius beetle.

To compensate I found three species of hemiptera that were new for me. There were lots more that were almost certainly new for me but I decided not to collect any of the myriad groundbugs that the suction sampler was pulling from the heath.

First up was this brute which I think is Alydus calcaratus, the sole UK representative of the Alydidae. The larvae apparently look a bit like ants. 

Second was this Rhombic Leatherbug Syromastus rhombeus. A species that I think is spreading northwards a bit.

Finally, this tiny lacebug which I think is Acalypta parvula. A really rather lovely looking thing with the most amazingly sculptured body. Would love to know why!

Gem

I ran both traps last night as the temperature didn't dip below 15 or 16 all night. There were 22 species of moth in the trap this morning plus a couple of Acossus rufipes. 

Highlight of the catch was a Gem Nycterosea obstipata, which was a new species for the garden and a species I've only seen once before, at the RSPB The Lodge under a security light in October 2018. 

Blogging has taken a bit of a back seat recently. I'm still going through all the beetle samples from this year and will try and get round to posting some of the highlights.

Everyone else's blog seems to either be on permanent hiatus or that late Autumn lull before year end summary and new year hopes and dreams. Anyway, hope everyone's OK....

And the animals I've trapped

I've not managed a day out beetling for a couple of months and was starting to get withdrawal symptoms. The garden compost heaps and light traps haven't been delivering much beyond the usual suspects and so the opportunity this week to visit a Breckland site in north Suffolk was too good to miss. 

Wednesday was really warm and sunny and I stupidly hadn't packed any sunscreen. Who needs that in late September, I said to myself whilst packing my gear. I did have a hat which averted the worst effects but by the end of the day I certainly felt that I had overdone it on 'the rays'.   

The site was a mixture of habitats. Some typical grazed and rabbit strewn Breckland heath with areas of different ages and vegetation type. The numerous large stones meant lots of crawling around on hands and knees and flipping these over in order to spy the carabids associated with this habitat. The vacuum sampler also got an outing and was employed frequently, delivering the best beetle of the day. There was also some water features, which whilst mainly steeped banked (and so less good for beetles) did have the occasional less steep, sandy margin which provided a few wetland beetles.

It was reasonably hard going at the total list won't be massive but there were numbers of ground beetles, 3 or 4 species of Calathus (need to check the melanocephalus/cinctus to be doubly sure).  Calathus ambiguus was a new species for me and I initially mis-IDd thus as C. mollis but the shape of the pronotum is different with sharper corners and a straighter hind edge.  

I was pleased to see the ground beetle-like tenebrioid Crypticus quisquilius again. I've only recorded this once before from a site in coastal Essex back in 2016.

There were lots of Harpalus pumilus hiding under the stones in areas with more bare ground and less developed vegetation. I must have found 15-20 of these during the course of the day, easily identified in the field on their small size and pale appendages.

 

Another new species for me was the weevil Trachyphloeus scabriculus a rather scrutty looking thing with bent antenna and spatula-like erect scales on the elytra. Not hugely common but locally common in the Brecks and found at the base of plants.

The aforementioned sandy water margins yielded around ten individuals of the weird carabid Omophron limbatus after a bit of liberal water splashing. Only the second time I've encountered this species after first seeing them in Norfolk earlier in the year.

However, the best beetle of the day was found in a suction sample from assorted low lying Breckland plants. When I saw it crawling around the tray I was confused, as it looked similar to an Agrilus jewel-beetle but was really tiny. My memory said that the small buprestids, like Trachys were more rounded. I had forgotten there was a genus of small ones called Aphanisticus, comprising two UK species. This one was from the more common of the two, although still pretty uncommon, A. pusillus. It apparently feeds on Black Bog-rush Schoenus nigricans, although it wasn’t  found on that here. I've only seen two other species of jewel-beetle so it was nice to finally see another.

The post title link is to the final song from Nirvana's breakthrough album, Nevermind, which was released 30 years ago this week. Where has that gone? I vividly remember it coming out and someone bringing their copy into school on vinyl to play in the sixth form common room. Whilst never a huge fan, the album has stood the test of time and still gets the occasional play in the car, especially if the kids are with me...