Need some time to get over this

In general I really don't like social media and am pretty convinced that it probably does more harm than good for the majority of people. I have been tempted to ditch it all on multiple occasions but (apart from instagram) I've never managed to bring myself to fully disconnect.

The main reason is that I find it incredibly useful and helpful with the pursuit of natural history. In fact, I think there has never been a better time to be into natural history, and much of that is to do with connecting with like minded people via social media. I would never ever got as far with beetles in the past couple of years without a huge number of helpful people correcting my mistakes and offering repeated encouragement. 

It also offers repeated small challenges provided (indirectly) by others. The last week being a case in point.

On Twitter I follow a number of coleopterists and one of those is the Lincolnshire Beetle recorder, Charlie. The three or four times I've been out beetling over the last week has basically been to copy what Charlie has been up to. 

Firstly, I have walked several miles of Cambridgeshire river bank in vain looking for Panagaeus cruxmajor, at a number of what I thought looked like 'promising sites'.

And then yesterday I saw this post, where he'd been out and found new county sites for the clematis feeding beetle Xylocleptes bispinus. Now I occasionally see Traveler's Joy in hedgerows around Cambridge however, it's not common around my immediate area. So today I drove to east of Cambridge where the clay gives way to chalk and where this plant is a bit easier to find.

I found an isolated patch with some easy parking and started to look. Feeding signs and emergence holes were evident in every bit I looked at, but I couldn't find any beetles.

I gathered some thicker lengths of Clematis and stuck it in a bag and brought it home for closer inspection.

After an hour pulling all the bits apart I only had a single dead adult Xylocleptes bispinus for my troubles 😒 but I did have two other new species of beetle for me.

First up was the ladybird Rhyzobius chrysomeloides, an introduced species that was first found in the 1990s. This is slightly more elongated than the similar R. litura and also has a more rounded prosternal keel.

You can just make out the rounded keel

The other new one was not only a new species but also a whole new family! (and possibly a new species for VC29 as I can't find any records). It's Leptophloeus clematidis and is the predator of Xylocleptes bispinus, being found in the galleries this species makes in the stems of clematis. It's a rather smart looking thing.

So I now have 3 days left to try and find a live adult Xylocleptes bispinus in order to add it to my 2020 beetle list. Mission accepted!

The post title inspiration is a dedication 😂