All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world

So last year I was tagged in a post about a beetle that was found in the grounds of Jesus College in central Cambridge. The college has extensive grounds that provide a bit of a haven in amongst the concrete. There are lots of trees and some scrubby bits alongside the more formalised gardens and Rhona (who tagged me in the post) has been doing a great job of documenting and recording the wildlife that occurs there. 

The beetle in question was Bruchidius siliquastri. These are an introduction from the far east, China I believe that have been recorded at a couple of sites in London but this was the first record for Cambridge. They feed on the seeds of the Judas Tree Cercis siliquastrum of which there are a cluster of three in the college grounds. They were only about for a day or two and then that was it. Until yesterday.....

I got a message to say they had been seen again so off I popped during lunch today to have a quick look.

We quickly located a few sat on nearby dogwood leaves.

out of focus again!

They have a red back end which make them rather distinctive when seen well, but at only c.3mm they are small and so require a focused search. They also have that annoying habit of dropping as soon as you get anywhere near them. 

We looked on the host plant itself but didn't see any there.

However, examining some of the seed pods we found that some of the drier and browner ones had obvious exit holes.

Closer examination of the seeds revealed further evidence of what is an exit hole, probably from this beetle  

There doesn't seem to be much more info on them available that I can find. 

So that was all seen very quickly and on my way to pick up my youngest kid I passed a downed poplar trunk and so had 10 minutes poking around under the bark. I quickly turned up 2 new species for me. Both common, a histerid and a silvanid.

Paromalus flavicornis

Silvanus unidentatus

So all in all a pretty effective hour's lunch break. This morning's moth trap was also a bit of a cracker but will do a separate post about that. There were 2 new beetles and a moth that I haven't seen in the UK for about 38 years. Any guesses?

The post title music link is from 80s/90s industrial pioneers, Ministry. Never saw them live (did you, Skev?) but really wish I had. Epic.