Last vacation was the same

So in my searching of the freezers and fridge I found another couple of errant tubes with beetles in. These (as with the previous one) were from a Spanish holiday back in 2017. This was a trip to the Picos de Europa and was somewhere that I hadn't visited since 1989.

In every way possible it was a successful holiday and was a real adventure for the two small kids, with a 24 hour ferry, whales, their first proper mountains and some pretty epic walks. It was so good that having concentrated on the eastern part in 2017 we visited the western section the following year. There was also loads of very cool natural history and a few beetles thrown in for good measure.

So given everything else going on in the world and the anxiety it generates it was rather nice to be looking at this beetle five years on and being transported back to a particular day and a place with amazing scenery and wildlife.

But what of the beetle? What species of carabid was is it? Well I quickly figured out it was in the genus Licinus but not one of the two species that occur in the UK. So that left me scratching my head until I remembered that I had a book of European ground beetle keys. 

I had bought this a few years back but had never really used it. Whilst incomplete for several genera it seemed to have good coverage of Licinus so I gave the beetle a go through the appropriate key.

Quite a big beetle at 14mm it keyed quite easily to L. cassideus. Some online exploration did nothing to dim the possibility of that moniker and so am quietly confident that I have keyed and identified my first non UK species of beetle.

Where will it all end!

The post title originates from the brilliant Foals and the song Olympic Airways, from their first album Antidotes. Enjoy.