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.
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.....
