Crikey, it's cold at the moment. Heavy frost in the garden this morning and not much insect life about until later on and even then...
The last few days haven't afforded much natural history and so I have been resorting to some reference collection maintenance and cataloging. I recently bought a printer and so am in the process of sorting out new fancy labels for my specimens, and also re-carding some beetles that are on tiny cards,. Could take a while.
Despite the sub zero temperatures I did however get a new beetle today. A neighbour texted to say they had found some weevils in some old flour and was I interested in seeing them? I popped over to have a look and found a reasonable number of these small beetles having a fine old time in some Tesco's flour.
They are Tribolium castaneum aka Red Flour Beetles, probably one of the most widely distributed stored product pest species in the world. Dependent on warmed human habitation I don't think they can survive in the wild in the UK. There aren't huge numbers of records on NBN or iRecord but suspect that's just a case of being under recorded rather than any comment on their rarity.
And pleasingly another one seen from my second favourite beetle family, the Tenebrionidae.
The post title inspiration is double linked, once through the lyrics used as a title and also a more tenuous one, but suspect Seth or Skev will easily clock it...
Are you referring to a dead Greek, and the ridiculous mass coverage!?
ReplyDeleteHa, that's not the link I had in my head. I was thinking more along the lines of the beetle and the band...
DeleteNice tunage by the way.
ReplyDeleteAt 10:25am it's probably a bit early to be blasting out a bit of Nephilim. Whenever I'm attacking trees with a saw I always sing "Trees Come Down" in my head! Umm...link is....???
ReplyDeleteThe link was flour! The band used to cover themselves in it for that 'authentic western' look ;)
ReplyDeleteAha! And there's me trying to find a song of theirs about Red Flowers!
ReplyDelete