20 years of beetling
Twenty years ago to the day, on Sunday 26th January 1992, I became a coleopterist! I was birding at Dungeness but turned over a stone and collected my first beetle. I was steeling myself for hours at the microscope, poring over victorian textbooks and baffling anatomical diagrams. But actually I just took it into work and showed it to Brian Eversham, my boss at the time, who instantly identified it as Agonum albipes with just a glance! Until then, I really admired the sort of birders who could call a flyover Richard’s Pipit, and I hadn’t realised that the sort of field ID skills that birders have could be applied to beetles. Keying things out at the microscope and working with museum collections is a big part of getting to know the beetles but a lot of species can be identified in the field. Some can even be identified in flight! My beetling career took off straight away and I have never stopped.
I’ve got all my beetle records from the first twenty years in a MapMate database: I suspect very few other coleopterists have been in that position. So I’ve taken the opportunity to look back at the records and do a bit of analysis. I’ll be giving a talk about the results at Coleopterists’ Day next weekend so I won’t spoil the talk by revealing them here now. But for a taster, here’s a map of all the 10-km squares where I’ve recorded beetles in the last 20 years.
My beetle records - 1992 to 2012.
Barbies in Beds
Natural history takes you to some strange places. I spent several hours underground on Saturday, carrying out licenced monitoring of bats in various hibernacula in Bedfordshire with Bob Cornes and members of the Beds Bat Group. Our first site, an old icehouse, had no bats on this occasion but two Buttoned Snouts were hibernating on the walls – a new moth for me and the first hibernation record of this species for Beds (VC30).
Buttoned Snout hibernating in an icehouse
We saw a few hibernating Heralds during the day too.
Herald in hibernation
We found five species of bat, a typical result for these sites. Two Pipistrelle sp. which I didn’t photograph, numerous Natterer’s Bats, several Daubenton’s Bats and Brown Long-eared Bats and, best of all, Barbastelle. I think there were 6 Barbies in total, a new bat for me. About 90 individual bats in total!
Daubenton's Bat, typically well-concealed.
Natterer's Bat, sleeping hammock-fashion!
Brown Long-eared Bat: my favourite photo of the day.
Barbastelle: it's unusual for them to hang free on the ceiling like this. Which is a shame as they look really cool - I like the shadow too.
Barbastelle: note the ears touching in the middle of the head, a diagnostic feature of this species.
Barbastelle, showing the peculiar and distinctive semicircular flap of skin protruding from just behind the outer margin of the ear.
Many thanks to Bob for the opportunity to see these bats, and to Andy and Melissa Banthorpe for identifying Buttoned Snout from the photo.
The toughest day of 2010: Phratora polaris
24th June 2010: day three of my Scottish fieldwork campaign was to be a change from surveying for saproxylic beetles in woodland. I was headed to the summit plateau of Ruadh-stac Mòr, Beinn Eighe where Mike Morris (1970) discovered the leaf-beetle Phratora polaris new to Britain in 1966. Ruadh-stac Mòr lies within the massive (5,800 hectares) Torridon Forest SSSI.
male Phratora polaris
I had picked a day with a dry forecast but normal weather forecasts don’t apply in the mountains. I set off walking at 07.35 and it started raining 10 minutes later. Within another 40 minutes, I was out of mobile signal for the rest of the day. After a couple of hours of slog, I entered the fearsome Coire Mhic Fhearchair and picked my way across to the steep scree fan in the far corner, passing a few mangled bits of plane wreckage where some poor aviator met his doom. The scree was treacherous underfoot and I was ascending into cloud, with worsening rain and an increasingly strong wind. At the top of the scree, the route steepens into a narrow chute of shattered rocks, exposed and channelling a wicked gusting wind. No place to miss your footing. Step by careful step I got to the top. But there was no relief there – I found myself on a knife-edge ridge in ferocious gusting wind and driving rain. On hands and knees I found a cleft in a boulder and wedged myself half in. Put some dry layers on and decided I’d better abandon the survey and descend. But actually couldn’t face the chute again straight away so I decided to stroll up towards the summit plateau for a bit of respite before beginning my descent. Conditions had worsened further&hellip ... read the rest
When the hunter becomes the hunted
On 21st June 2010 I drove for 10 hours from home to get to Ullapool; the start of an 11-day entomological survey campaign in the west of Scotland. My survey site on 22nd was Rhidorroch Woods SSSI which turned out to be a couple of hours drive on dirt tracks up an increasingly beautiful glen. The weather was superb – a rare treat in NW Scotland – and I couldn’t wait to get into the field.
Rhidorroch Woods SSSI
This isolated veteran pine, above the modern-day treeline, was the best tree I found. Scarred by lightning strikes and ripped by the weight of winter snow, but still living, it was a magnet for saproxylic beetles.
On a fine, sunny day in Scotland, when big beetles like clicks, chafers and longhorns are buzzing past on the wing, there is no better place to be. As long as you’ve got a midge net (and are prepared to abandon all personal dignity and actually wear it)!
Undignified headgear
You also need to keep one hand free for swatting horseflies. And a little time is required each evening for tweezering off all the ticks!
It pretty much goes without saying, but the warning colours of this Bee Beetle Trichius fasciatus (a chafer) failed to frighten me. Very few of these Batesian mimics seem to be good enough at mimicry to fool the human eye.
Bee Beetle Trichius fasciatus
But, as I was investigating the hollow interior of a decaying birch, a bumblebee started harassing me at close quarters. I immediately backed off and legged it away for about 20 metres, reckoning I must have disturbed a nest. As soon as I&hellip ... read the rest
Christmas shopping entomology
I know for most people a Christmas shopping trip is a lost natural history opportunity. But for a pan-species lister, something good can turn up wherever and whenever. First up, this striking black-and-red Arocatus ?longiceps? bug found on the trunk of a Plane tree while browsing the Christmas market on the Champs Élysées, Paris on 20th November. My French specimen (on the left) looks quite different to the Arocatus longiceps I have previously found on London’s Plane trees (on the right, from the Natural History Museum’s wildlife garden), with paler appendages and reduced black markings on the body.
Arocatus from the Champs Elysees (L) and NHM garden (R)
The following weekend we visited Whipsnade Zoo with friends Rich and Sara and budding mammalogist Lucy. As well as doing some Christmas shopping in the gift shop, we found a couple of interesting insects in the Insect House but on the loose. There were trails of a miniscule ant which I think is a species of dolichoderine but doesn’t seem to be included in Bolton & Collingwood’s RES Handbook, or Skinner & Allen’s Naturalists’ Handbook.
Miniscule ?dolichoderine? ant from Whipsnade
And on the exit door, this Australian Cockroach Periplaneta australasiae was making a bid for freedom. I’ve seen this species before in the Eden Project biomes.
Australian Cockroach Periplaneta australasiae
Finally, our local Tesco in Leighton Buzzard still supports a population of the weevil Otiorhynchus crataegi in the car park, first found here in September 2008. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only Bedfordshire site for this weevil but I’m sure if more people looked it could be found much more widely. It was discovered new to Britain in Berkshire in 1980 and&hellip ... read the rest
Devil’s-bit Scabious Jewel Beetle Trachys troglodytes
While Trachys troglodytes may not be quite as jewel-like as some of its larger relatives in family Buprestidae, it is still a little gem. I’ve only started finding it in the last couple of years while surveying calcareous grasslands with a suction-sampler.
Devil's-bit Scabious Jewel Beetle Trachys troglodytes
The best way to record this species, as Keith Alexander has described (Alexander, 1989), is to look for the larval leaf-mines in the host plant: Devil’s-bit Scabious Succisa pratensis. Late summer into early autumn is a good season to be looking, when the Devil’s-bit is in flower. But if you are confident at recognising Devil’s-bit from just the leaves, the leaf-mines can be found from at least 7th June (my earliest record).
Trachys troglodytes mine
Trachys troglodytes is not the only species to mine the leaves of Devil’s-bit but the shiny black spot is diagnostic; it marks the spot at which the egg was laid and thus marks the point from which the larva starts feeding to produce its full-depth blotch mine.
Until Keith sussed out the leaf-mines and published his note, Trachys troglodytes was regarded as quite a rarity. The current map shows it is widespread in southern Britain, though not nearly as widespread as the distribution of its host-plant!
Reference
Alexander, K.N.A. (1989). Trachys troglodytes Gyllenhal (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) widespread in the Cotswold limestone grasslands of Gloucestershire. British journal of entomology and natural history, 2: 91 – 92. [Browse this article online here].
Pan-species listing milestones
Jonty Denton’s still not letting up, with 289 species added since mid-May taking his record-breaking list through 10,500 to stand at 10,535.
Dave Gibbs isn’t ready to submit an update yet but has added about 250 species during 2011 and reckons he’ll get to 10,000 by about the end of 2012.
Graeme Lyons and Martin Harvey have both broken 3,500 during the year. Graeme retains a slender lead.
Jon Newman, Steve Gale and Sarah Patton have all had very good years and all broken through 3,000 during the autumn. Sarah has pulled well clear though, by finishing the job of gleaning records from old notebooks to take her list to 3,327. Jon and Steve are neck-and-neck on 3,013 and 3,012 respectively!
Seth Gibson has just passed his target of 2,500 and has his sights set on 3,000.
Mark Skevington will be passing 2,000 before much longer.
Most of the pan-species listers have been spurred into tackling new groups, and fungi especially have been a rich source of new species, along with mosses, liverworts and beetles. Despite this fine example set by others, I seem to have spent most of the year concentrating more and more on beetles. Despite the fact that I’ve only seen a little over half the British and Irish beetle fauna and there’s still almost 2,000 species to go, it does seem to be getting harder and harder to find new ones – and more and more rewarding each time I do!
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, beetling man …
This is Peter Hammond at Langley Park demonstrating his Pat-a-Cake method with fine sievings from red-rotten heartwood.
Here’s a technique for finding the sort of tiny beetles that are so small or well camouflaged that you can’t see them until they move. Try it next summer:
- Tip the sievings onto a sheet in full sun, preferably on a hot surface such as sun-baked tarmac.
- Pat the sievings down into a very thin layer.
- Lay aside your pipe.
- Take up your pooter.
- Get comfy.
- Wait for rare beetles to break cover as the heat starts to bother them.
We were looking for the tiny pselaphine Plectophloeus nitidus, which we didn’t find. But we did see the very distinctive larvae of Scraptia (Scraptiidae) with their bulbous tails that they autotomise (self-amputate) under duress.
Scilly 2011: still there!
Gareth Richards had four days off in half-term and we decided to revisit Scilly. Flew on the Skybus from Land’s End aerodrome at 10.40 on Monday 24th, found a B&B in Hugh Town, dumped our bags and set off to Lower Moors to try for the Northern Waterthrush which has been present since 16th September. But that plan was soon abandoned when we passed a couple of birders looking intently into a tiny bulb field behind Porth Mellon. “Got anything?” “We’ve seen a bird we can’t identify.” In other words, it could be mega. After about 20 minutes it showed again, very briefly in the shadows of the back hedge. Thrush Nightingale maybe? But as the crowd swelled there was talk of Veery, Hermit Thrush and even Rufous-tailed Robin. Over the next couple of hours, more and more people squeezed into the narrow viewing space, pressing me deeper and deeper into the hedge. Gareth and I both eventually saw it reasonably well and called it as a Common Nightingale. Only my second on Scilly but we’d all been hoping for something rarer, perhaps hoping too hard.
The Northern Waterthrush was to prove a devious adversary but the Wilson’s Snipe that has eluded some this autumn could not have been more accommodating. On constant show with about 6 Common Snipe, it had a preen, showing off its diagnostic underwings and outer tail-feathers before flying towards the hide and walking up the bank to feed just a few feet from me, in company with a Common Snipe for convenient comparison.
Common (L) and Wilson's (R) Snipe
Wilson's Snipe
We did see the Waterthrush in the afternoon from the Shooter’s Pool screen, calling and showing for just a few seconds. Tickable but not&hellip ... read the rest
Scilly 1985: I was there!
26 years ago, half-term, Saturday 19th October 1985, I got off the ferry on my first visit to the Isles of Scilly, aged 16, with three school-friends. We walked straight up to the Garrison camp site. While I was pitching our tent and Gareth Richards was checking in and paying, a birder with a resplendent beard walked up to me and asked “Can I interest you in a Booted Warbler?”. He’d just found it and within a minute I was onto it – the first tick of the trip! Gareth never did see it but we couldn’t give it long as we had bigger fish to fry that day. First stop was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo giving awesome views from the Garrison Walls looking down into a Sallyport garden where it was perched on a rotary washing-line! Then to the Incinerator to watch a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak scoffing blackberries. Moving quickly on to Old Town churchyard for UTV of a Red-eyed Vireo in the high elm canopy. Across the road to the school for fabulous views of a Myrtle Warbler (as it was then; Yellow-rumped Warbler now) creeping around on lichen-covered elm boughs. Up to the airport for an unbelievably showy Bobolink crawling around in the grass at point blank range. Final rarity of the day was a juv Night Heron roosting in sallows on Lower Moors. But I had one more tick to come – Brambling!
My first 'scope: an Opticron Piccolo, purchased after 6 months on a paper round.
On Sunday we took the boat to Tresco for another deluge of ticks: a Radde’s Warbler in the Great Pool sallows which is still the best one I’ve ever seen; Spotted Sandpiper, Ring-necked Duck and Richard’s Pipit all at the Simpson’s Field end of Great&hellip ... read the rest
