At 1.3 millimetres long, Liocyrtusa vittata is less than your average beetle, and tricky to identify even under a microscope, but it’s very scarce.
I’m wondering whether its scarcity has anything to do with its diminutive size. I’m not sure I would have noticed it ‘in the field’ but was able to recognize it as more than a shiny speck of protoplasm when it landed on the old sheet I was using as a backdrop to the mercury vapour moth light I’d lit up on 28 June 2011.
Posted in General Stuff, Surveys
I think it must have been sitting at the edge of my consciousness. I regularly have a clear out of survey specimens. These are the sample voucher specimens collected, but once identified under the microscope, they go off to be used for whatever educational purpose I can throw them to. The last lot went to the Horniman Museum, some might have found their way into the behind-the-scenes reference collections, but most were for use at their hands-on nature base.
Last week, whilst sorting out some insects from past surveys, I noticed the largish shieldbug. It was unnamed. It looked odd. Dredging the depths of memory I vaguely recall thinking it looked a bit unusual when I swept it from the rough brownfield herbage between the railway lines and houses behind Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre in July 2012. At the time I glossed over it as possibly a large pale version of the common hairy shieldbug, Dolycoris baccarum. As usual, I did not have enough time to do anything more than merely set it aside to look at in the dim future. Now, however, pinned beside specimens of Dolycoris, it looked very different.
Imagine, if you will, the sound of assorted gears and cogs grinding, light bulbs pinging on and pennies dropping. Oh! It’s that one.
Rhaphigaster nebulosa, the mottled shieldbug, had been spreading through Europe for the last 20 years when it was first noticed in Rainham Marshes in September 2010. Penny Frith found a breeding colony in Warwick Gardens between Peckham and Camberwell, the following year. What’s really embarrassing is that I went with her to the site to try and find Orientus ishidae, another bug she’d discovered there new to Britain, and she told me all about Rhaphigaster at the time. Her pictures of it are spectacular. I just did not take it in.
I’d better have another trawl through the last few years’ left-overs, to see what else I’ve missed.
The How to be a Curious Entomologist workshops were set up to teach people how to make an insect collection — simply, with easy, cheap, often home-made equipment. But why, in this day and age of electronic wizardly, high-spec digital cameras, email and internet should you need a collection? Because only about 5% of UK insect species can be definitively identified from a photo. Large moths, butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers and a few others are unmistakable. But that leaves 95% which can only be firmly named by looking at obscure characters under a microscope — often individual bristles on individual legs.
I recently undertook a reconnaissance survey visit to a small local nature reserve. It was late in the season, but I was told there were quite a few invertebrate records on file, collected over several years of casual observation. These would, no doubt, be useful. What I got was a list of common garden butterflies and bumblebees. The reserve warden was slightly disappointed when I all but dismissed them as useless. The trouble is they were all obvious common species that could be found in almost any garden in London. They gave no insight into the special habitat or distinct insect community of the site. If I had only been handed a scruffy box full of badly pinned and awkwardly carded insect specimens, oh how different it would have been.
Late-in-the-season finds from Ladywell Fields.
After three curious workshops, we now have three prospective insect collections. They can be added to, piecemeal, over many years if need be. But whenever it comes to finding out what occurs on one of these sites, at least the incoming surveyor will have a starting point. And I know there are some gems in there.
The identifying bit of entomology is often what takes the time, and I just don’t have the time to work thoroughly through all of the collections we made, but here, at least, is a taster of some of the more unusual things that turned up.
Brachycarinus tigrinus Schiller, a small pale speckled ground bug (family Rhopalidae). This distinctive bug is a recent colonist to Britain, and was first found here in 2003, in Battersea Park, central London (by some chap called Jones, apparently). It has since been found in several brownfield localities in Essex and London, but is still very rare and confined to a narrow belt of localities in the Thames Gateway. It was almost the very first insect collected at the Deptford Creekside workshop, 30 June 2012.
Chaetostomella cylindrica, a very small pale picture-winged fly (family Tephritidae). Breeding in the heads of various thistles, and especially knapweed, this is a fairly widespread fly, occuring through most of Britain and Ireland, it is nevertheless not common, and I don’t come across it every day. Two specimens were collected during the Ladywell Fields workshop, 13.x.2012.
Cordylura albipes Fallén, a small black and white dung fly (family Scathophagidae). Much more secretive than the common yellow dungfly, Scathophaga stercoraria, and more rarely seen. No doubt feeding in the plentiful dog dung in Ladywell Fields, where it was found 13.x.2012.
Icterica westermanni (Meigen), a small orange picture-winged fly (family Tephritidae). This nationally scarce fly is known from an area south-east of a line from The Wash, to Gloucester to Weymouth. It breeds in the heads of ragwort, Senecio species. Despite its widespread and common foodplant it remains very elusive. This was one of the rare insect species highlighted by Buglife when it challenged proposed legislation to make ragwort a notifiable noxious weed. One was found by general sweeping at the Devonshire Road workshop, 29 July 2012.
Olibrus flavicornis (Sturm), a minute black flower beetle (family Phalacridae). According to the beetle review (1992), this beetle was considered to have red data book status ‘K’ — rare but insufficiently known. It can only be distinguished from others in the genus by microscopic examination of the microsculpture of the wing-cases. At the time it had not been seen since it was recorded in 1950 from Camber on the East Sussex coast. However, it is now known to occur, often in large numbers, on brownfield sites in London and the Thames Estuary. It is still very confined, geographically, and unknown away from this narrow region. It is usually found on autumn hawkbit Leontodon autumnalis, and possibly other similar plants. The larvae are thought to develop in the flower heads, while the adults feed on pollen. Several were found at the Deptford Creekside workshop, 30 June 2012.
Omalus aeneus (Fabricius), a very small metalic blue and green cuckoo wasp (family Chrysididae). One of the rubytails, so called because many are brilliantly red coloured, but not this one. Rubytails are cleptoparasitoids, or cuckoo wasps, laying their eggs in the nests of other wasp species; the hatching grub then devours the host egg and the food stores laid in for it. This one is known to parasitize various common species, but it is very local itself; it is more or less restricted to Kent, Surrey, Hampshire and Devon. One specimen was found during the Devonshire Road workshop, 29.vii.2012.
Pantilius tunicatus (Linnaeus), a large reddish brown and green capsid bug (family Miridae). Found on hazel, birch and alder, this handsome and distinctive bug is fairly widespread in southern England, but not common. Several were found in Sue Godfrey Nature Park, during the Deptford Crossfields Bioblitz, 15.ix.2012.
Rhyzobius chrysomeloides (Herbst), a minute black and pink ladybird (family Coccinellidae). This tiny beetle is extremely similar to a very common species, R. litura (Fabricius), and its occurrence in Britain was only recognized in 2000 when it was found in several Surrey localities. It is probable that this is a recent arrival in Britain and its spread has so far been monitored in Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Berkshire, Hampshire and Sussex. One was beaten from some hawthorn hedging at the Ladywell Fields workshop, 13.x.2012.
Stictopleurus punctatonervosus (Goeze), a medium-sized brown leaf bug, family Rhopalidae. At the time of the national review of British Hemiptera, in 1992, this species was regarded as being extinct in Britain. It had been recorded from only two localities here, the last in 1870. It has now successfully recolonized Britain since it was recorded in Essex in 1997 and has now become a species typical of the dry, well-drained and sparsely vegetated brownfield sites in and around urban London, Thames Estuary and beyond. Specimens were found at the Deptford Crossfields bioblitz, 15.ix.2012 and at the Ladywell Fields workshop, 13.x.2012.
Not a bad start.
Survey left-overs — there’s no room in the reference collection for everything.
I’ve just delivered a store-box full of left-overs to the Horniman Museum. They can use them in their hands-on spaces, without fear of losing their own valuable or important specimens. They are the remnants of various surveys; they’ve served their purpose, but now they are surplus to requirements.
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Every time I visit a site to record insects, I have to make an identification-potential decision for each insect I find. Since the ‘species’ is the currency of most ecological surveys, I have to make a judgement about how realistically I can correctly identify each individual to species level. I can hardly turn in a report claiming to have found “lots of pretty spiders, some hairy flies and a disgusting worm”. Although, that might make for some interesting reading and controversial management suggestions.
There are several different categories along my ease-of-identification spectrum:
Despite the thrill of finding a great silver diving beetle, or a purple hairstreak, distinctive and charismatic creatures that can easily be identified in the field, most of the category 1 and 2 insects are common and widespread, fascinating perhaps, but ultimately not very informative about any given habitat because of their ubiquity.
Likewise, at the other end of the scale, the huge numbers of teeny-tiny crawling and squirming things barely visible, all the immatures and nymphs and spiderlings, all the ‘problem’ groups (don’t mention ichneumons) are not worth the effort, I’m on a limited budget and have limited time. In the interests of propitiousness and convenience, these have to be rejected at the first.
Not surprisingly it is the intermediates which are most useful. These are the unfamiliar, sometimes more awkward, but nevertheless workable insects (mostly small beetles, flies, bugs, bees, wasps and ants), and they can tell us more about a site than any number of bright but common butterflies. But it is these that need the most careful study and identification. They’re the ones that need to be examined under a microscope.
At the end of the season, when I finally get round to identifying things, I can work my way through most of category 3 and some of category 4. Here come the surprises — the rarities and oddities which would have been overlooked but for the presence of a specimen under the microscope.
Now, after years of moderately serious entomology, my reference collection is starting to fill up, and I just don’t have the room to incorporate much more. I still have to collect a specimen to correctly identify it, but I feel guilty about the time and effort spent catching, killing, mounting and examining it. I’m loath to throw it away. So, for now, the Horniman Museum gets them and they pass from scientific study to educational. Natural recycling, I call it.
Posted in Surveys
Tagged Horniman Museum, Insect identification, microscope, reference collection
Coquettish, I thought, with that flick of the tail.
I’m not really very fussed about moths. What an awful confession for an entomologist to make. I can get excited about microscopic beetles, and often also about bugs, bees, ants, flies, obscure parasitoid wasps and even false scorpions. But moths? They’re just a bit tame really, aren’t they?
The words of Oliver Wendell Holmes ring very true in my ear: “Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little folks; Coleoptera for men, Sir!”
Perhaps it’s because I never went through a moth phase on my early entomological journey. I went more or less straight from butterfly collecting to beetles.
However, I do like caterpillars. As they’re wingless perhaps I think of them as honorary creepy-crawlies. And this is one of my favourites — the psychedelic toothbrush that is the caterpillar of the pale tussock moth, Calliteara pudibunda. With its all-along lilac side bristles, its delicate yellow tail blush and the extraordinary black velvet intersegmental flashes, it presents itself a bizarre creature.
This one had chosen a peculiar resting place; it was tucked deep inside the chiseled hole made by a woodpecker in a willow tree on the banks of the River Stour, near Sandwich. Perhaps it reasoned that having dug there once and moved on, the bird was unlikely to return. Something a bit like lightning not striking the same place twice? I prodded it with a grass stem and it shuffled out for a picture before heading further up the trunk.
It is definitely one of my favourite caterpillars. What a pity it turns into such a dull-looking moth.
Posted in General Stuff, Surveys
Tagged Calliteara pudibunda, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Pale tussock moth, River Stour, Sandwich
Perhaps I should have been thinking about the long game, when we first started running Bug Hunts at Nunhead Cemetery’s annual Open Day. I can’t actually remember when we began. The consensus seems to pick 1986 as our starting point. The Open Day had been run for a couple of years before, but this was to be the big one, and the Bug Hunt was born.
The premise was easy, the kids would come up and collect a plastic container, see what bugs they could find whilst they wandered about through the huge overgrown burial ground, bring them back to the stall to have them identified by yours truly, and receive a really cool certificate with what they found, Latin names and all. We were mobbed. And we have been every year since.
Pleasing simplicity from 1988
At first, it was just me, a few photographs and a simple trestle table. We were a bit more formal in them days. One dressed for the occasion, of course. That’s my favourite red bow-tie, I still wear it. I probably used a fountain pen to write the certificates.
The 1990s was all about big hair and shoulder pads.
I’m still not entirely sure what was going on with my hair in 1990. I vaguely remember thinking it was my Oscar Wilde look. I just looked like my mother. We had splashed out on a table cloth, but the signs were still all hand-written.
2002 — I have an ice-lolly pout and that’s first-born with the ice-cream.
Every so often we would be caught out by the weather. The Bug Hunt would become a Slug Hunt and I would have a raging cold from sitting in the drizzle. By 2002 we had a gazebo to offer some protection from the elements. My father would come and help with the hordes (he’s just out of shot here), and my children would loiter in the background, peering over at the prizes brought back by eager bug-hunters. I’d usually still wear a tie, but the seriously greying hair is starting to look like faded astroturf.
For the last three years Lillian has been my amanuensis.
So this is us in 2012 — casual chic, sans tie, sans hat. My father has decided, aged 82, that he no longer fancies the long drive up into the madness of London’s congested roads, so Lillian has been roped in to help. She writes out the certificates as I breeze on about woodlouse names (Porcellio scaber = “scabby little pig”), pretend to eat the occasional strawberry snail or describe in elaborate gory detail just how a parasitic wasp’s maggots eat the poor caterpillar alive, from the inside, to a disgusted, but enthralled, 5-year-old.
It’s usually a sedate and easy start.
But we soon get hemmed in by the queuing bug-hunters.
It’s all great fun. It’s exhausting, but immensely satisfying. Some of the kids come back year after year, and their parents proudly tell us that they have kept all the Bug Hunt certificates going back to… well, however many years it might be. And occasionally, it really comes home to us how long this has all been going on — when someone arrives with her 3-year-old, to do the bug hunt, just like she herself did it, 25 years ago.
This just in, a plea from Buglife…
Buglife urgently need some volunteers to help us create habitat for the rare and endangered streaked bombardier beetle.
Brachinus sclopeta, the streaked ground beetle, painfully beautiful and mythically rare.
Why do we need help? The streaked bombardier is one of the UK’s most endangered invertebrates. It lives on brownfield sites that have been abandoned and where nature has taken hold. It is only known from 2 sites in the UK both in London. One of the sites is in the process of being destroyed and we want to create suitable habitat for the beetles to move to. It is crucial that the habitat is created ASAP to prevent the beetles from becoming extinct.
What is the task? Creating habitat mounds for the streaked bombardier beetle. The work will involve loading wheel barrows with soil, bricks and chalk and moving it 30m then positioning it in ‘S’ shaped mounds. After the mounds have been created we need to plant plug plants and sow wildflower seeds.
Where: University of London Docklands Campus
Easy to get to via public transport only a short walk (less than 5 mins) from Cyprus station on the Docklands Light Railway. Buglife staff will meet you at the station. Or if travelling by road the postcode is E16 2RD, University Way. Once on University Way, take 2nd barrier on the right going into the Sports Centre car park. At the barrier, press the button and state you are here for the Buglife work on the Teardrop site. Once through the barrier, take an immediate left on the red bricked path, through the gates and park in the tarmac area. Once at the site please call Buglife staff and we will meet you.
When: Thursday 3rd May and Friday 4th May
What time: 10am- 4pm
What you need to bring: warm water-proof clothes, stout boots (steel toe capped if you have them). Buglife will provide thick gloves and eye protection. Bring a packed lunch too!
Contact details: If you can help please contact Sarah Henshall on 07968 976213 or email sarah.henshall@buglife.org.uk
Posted in Surveys
Tagged Brachinus sclopeta, brownfield, Buglife, habitat creation, streaked bombardier beetle
I usually work alone. It’s much easier to just look out of the window, take a measure of the weather and decide “yes, I’ll head off to…” wherever it might be. Almost inevitably, trying to organize meeting someone on site is fraught with the usual difficulties of fitting in with their office work, avoiding their important meetings, or being let down at the last minute by the weather.
But there was a time when an organized visit would work out very well. I recently came across these photos from a trip to Wicken Fen and the Breck near Mildenhall, in 1983. Peter Hodge and David Porter drove up in David’s slightly ramshackle half-timbered Austin traveller to pick me up from Willesden Green before we set off up the A11 to East Anglia.
David owned several of these charismatic cars, but mostly only one worked, whilst the others mouldered in the garden to be cannibalized for spares, or to provide a breeding ground for a series of pretty bracket fungi on the wood-framing. Rather unnervingly, every time he went round a left-hand bend at speed, the driver’s door would fly open, causing more than some danger to passing motorcyclists.
David Porter (left) and Peter Hodge display the usual beetle-collecting attitude — head down finguers in the turf. Looking for Hypera dauci in the Breck I think.
At Wicken we met Tony Drane and the reserve warden, who showed us the classroom/laboratory where we could set specimens, and to the dormitory crowded with bunk beds, where we would spend the night. Wicken is known for a number of wetland specialities; I had hopes of perhaps spotting the musk beetle, Aromia moscata, but mostly it was small fry we found, sieved onto a plastic sheet or dredged out of the dykes.
At one point Tony spotted Donacia crassipes sitting on a waterlily leaf in the middle of a dyke, he was not going to be foiled by its inaccessibility, so he stripped off to his undies and waded in. I have to say, I was mightily impressed by this dedication, and tried to stifle a snort of laughter as the beetle flew off just as he got to within inches of it.
Tony Drane beetle hunting in a drain.
I’m sure we saw more Donacia later, along with plenty of the usual reedbed and marsh fare including Demetrias imperialis, D. monostigma and Rugilus fragilis. I’ve no doubt forgotten most of what we saw, but I do remember the mosquitoes, and the snoring. Oh, and the coasting in neutral down hills on the way home to save petrol until a service station came into view.
What's that drying on Tony Drane's water net? Doesn't he know to always carry a spare pair of Y-fronts, for aquatic beetle failure emergencies?
Posted in General Stuff, Surveys
Tagged David Porter, Morris Traveller, Peter Hodge, Tony Drane, Wicken Fen
I was recently reminded of the tale, told by Charles Darwin in later life, about his fervent beetle-collecting youth. Peeling off the loose bark of a dead tree, probably somewhere in Cambridgeshire, he saw two rare beetles and picked them up, one in each hand. On spotting yet another he was momentarily at a loss, but then decided to pop one of those he held into his mouth for safe-keeping, in order to free up his hand to catch the third. Of course it ejected some foul liquid and in the inevitable coughing, spluttering and choking fit that followed he lost all three.
Personally, I think Mr Darwin was being a bit sloppy. No real entomologist ever leaves home without at least some potential collecting containers about his or her person. A couple of glass tubes in a top pocket are the usual answer, but at a push, almost anything can be brought to use — empty humus pots, take-away containers, matchboxes, plastic milk bottles, urine sample kits. I once had to remove the ink cartridge from my fountain pen to drop in a small picture-wing fly — worked a treat.
So when, sitting in the Red Lion Pub in London’s Mayfair, some time back in the 1980s, it was no surprise when the person next to me took out a brown aspirin bottle from his pocket and offered me some of the contents. The American tourists sitting nearby were agog, and nudged each other surreptitiously until I explained that this was the perfectly normal behaviour of anyone who had just left a meeting of the British Entomological and Natural History Society. After leaving the lecture hall of the Alpine Club, in South Audley Street, where the meetings took place, a hard core would descend on the snug bar at the Red Lion in Waverton Street (it’s now boarded up, presumably about to be redeveloped). Here we would cogitate on the proceedings of the meeting, and continue earnest discussions about the correct way to find obscure leaf-mining moths, or ruminate on the last time anyone had seen a Clifden Nonpareil.
They must have closed it down because of the strange behaviour of some of the clientele.
Unscrewing the pill bottle, he gingerly tipped out a couple of beetles into the palm of my hand — Melasis buprestoides, a strange and handsome creature, I think I had only ever seen it once or twice before. Working for the National Trust biodiversity team, Andy Foster had plenty of opportunity to find such bark beetles, especially those, like Melasis, which are particularly at home in ancient woodland remnants. Would I like a specimen or two? Actually, they are much larger than the diminutive one I remembered finding in Sussex. Might be the other sex. Yes, I’ll take a couple for my reference collection. Now let’s see what I’ve got to put them in. A small glass tube tucked into the side pocket of my brief case. Perfect. If only Mr Darwin had been so prepared.
Bulldozed piles of rubble, twisted metal and rubbish — ugly, dirty, smelly, dangerous. Brownfields have an real image problem. Click on picture for PDF of lecture text.
On Friday 9 March 2012, I gave a lecture, so titled, at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Derided as economically useless ‘wastelands’, brownfields are often portrayed as being little more than bulldozed heaps of rubble, twisted metal and rubbish — dirty, smelly, ugly, dangerous. Brownfields, truly, have an image problem.
It starts with the name. Brown is not a cool colour; it is the colour of dirt, the colour of excrement. More importantly, brownfields are seen as not green. And, conversely, green is the colour of the moment, the colour on everyone’s lips. Green is the colour of the countryside; it’s the colour of nature, the colour of goodness. More than this, green has been misappropriated by anyone wanting to link into these aspirational attributes; green has become a powerful brand. Leaving aside the Green Party, which has commandeered the word as part of its very name, even in general parlance the environmental movement is usually described as a green movement, companies are keen to show off their green credentials, we all aspire to green living. Green is so cool. I wouldn’t like to contemplate for a moment what might be the response if I said I was part of a brown movement.
Brownfields are, nevertheless, very important for wildlife; in particular they are important for invertebrates — insects especially. The trouble is that insects are imbued with their own image problem. When Ridley Scott needed a model for his blood-thirsty, parasitic, shiny, armored Alien, he leant heavily on the imagery of insects. If insects were the size of cats or dogs, they would be the most terrifyingly awful creatures on Earth. Unfortunately, even though insects are very small, many people think they are already quite awful enough thank you. Trying to show that brownfield sites are worthy of ecological study and even environmental conservation because of their invertebrate interest, is a doubly uphill struggle. But I will try.
Here is the text of the lecture.
Posted in General Stuff, Surveys
Tagged Brownfields, ruderal, Thames Gateway, urban wildlife, wasteland
Shieldbugs are lovely — why else would we give them such a heroic heraldic name?
Crawling into a bookshop near you. All myths about pants and pantries are dispelled. It contains one limerick.
My fave rhyme is limerick brevity, Five lines and a twist in th'extremity. The words quite a mash-up, Dr Seuss/ Ogden Nash-up — Gravitas with a smidgeon of levity.
Dylan Thomas wondered deeply about the worth of wasps. Although we are not told which authors wrote them, among the 'useful' presents he recieved were 'books that told me everything about the wasp, except why. This is the why.
I like beetles, I like them very much indeed, so I wrote a book about them.
A key selling point is the fact that the spine of the book is adorned with an elephant's bottom. Publication: February 2017.
A natural history of animals in the home. Click here for details of how to get the now scarce hardback.
The paperbacks were released into the wild in February 2016
A series of introductory 'how to' workshops/ seminars. Click here for follow-up information.
Published August 2012. How an irritating but trivial gnat became imbued with dark menace well beyond its diminutive size.
Garden Wildlife blog, mostly creepy crawlies, but also the occasional bluetit, fox or bat. Don't mention cats though.
Published May 2012. This'll get you scratching your head. Everything you wanted to know about head lice.
Biggest, fattest, fastest, shiniest, loudest, but also ugliest, slimiest, most dangerous, hairiest legs and rarest.
....and it's gone paperback
Scanning electron microscopy of shark skin, bat tongue, butterfly wing, fern frond.
I wrote on the biology, evolution, ecology and physiology of honeybees; others contributed chapters on beekeeping history, practical hive husbandry and honey recipes.
Article for the Sierra Club. The astounding close-up images are by John Hallmén.
What a waste — what is the biodiversity value of urban brownfields?
Richard Jones
Bugman Jones 
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