Going missing

It's been a while....

It's not that there hasn't been natural history happening. There has, but just not as much as usual and then I also haven't really had the urge to blog about it either. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Family and work life have been extremely busy this year and my running has also taken up a ludicrous amount of time as I fully embrace my midlife crisis and refuse to believe that I'm about to hit the half century. Two ultra marathons down and one left for the year. It has been great to do and I'm now the fittest I have been in years if not ever.

So, back to the wildlife. Despite the lack of posts I have managed to do some poking about in the UK and further afield. I did some beetling in SW Scotland and Norfolk as well as the usual Cambridge sites and also had trips to France, Spain and Finland over the summer.

The moth trap has been a semi-regular fixture at home and I have racked up a few new garden moth species. But it was another visitor this week that kicked my ar*e into writing this post.

In amongst the various sallows, Mallows and chestnuts, this little fella (well female) popped up on to an egg box and I potted for some photos.

I think this is a female Ectobius lapponicus aka the Dusky Cockroach. It's one of our native cockroach species and doesn't get too much further north that here, although I guess that is changing with our climate hotting up. Twenty three degrees here today and it's the second week of October. Beyond scary!.

Anyway, a new species for me and a good excuse to resume sporadic posting.

The post title is nicked from one of the singles from Maximo Park's Mercury Prize nominated first album. Always worth a listen.