A slow start to 2021

I decide to kick of the year's beetling by visiting some of Cambridgeshire's ancient woodland.

Boy, it was hard going. There were springtails in abundance but I struggled to find many beetles. It was very wet underfoot which meant that the usual tactic of finding carabids under logs failed miserably as they had all either moved or drowned!. 

Sieving leaf litter and moss turned up very little of interest and I only managed to find five species in total. I found the ubiquitous Tachyporus hypnorum and T. dispar plus a mystery aleoch that will need a closer look.

The fourth species of staph I found was this Rugilus orbiculatus

Turning over one piece of well rotted oak, I found several of these surprisingly large larvae hiding amongst the detritus.

I'm pretty sure they are Pyrochroa serraticornis aka the Red-headed Cardinal Beetle.

I suspect a visit to the compost heap will be needed to properly kick the 2021 beetling year off. On the plus side I only have one specimen as homework :)

Garden staphs

I've been working through some of the staphs that I picked up during the Bank holiday weekend. It was the first hot day of the year and there was so much activity. Beetles in flight, beetles on the ground but mainly beetles in the compost heap.

Staphs had the highest diversity from whopping big Philonthus to tiny aleochs. Below is a selection of what turned up. Several of these are new to me.

It's pretty amazing what's out there if you look...

Philonthus tenuicornis

Megarthrus sp. poss depressus

Heterothops minutus

Philonthus jurgans and varians

Rugilus orbiculatus