Fencing weevils and spiders that change colour...

I've been looking out for some fantastic little weevils that usually appear with,or soon after, the first hazel leaves. This year,as with many invertebrates,they were somewhat later than previous finds. But...on a superb spring day that saw rising temperatures recently, I spotted my first...

These are hazel leaf-roller weevils (Apoderus coryli) and although I've yet to find evidence of this (a task for this year) they get their name from the way that adult females roll the edge of a hazel leaf and lay eggs in the cradle it creates.

I did also witness something of a first for me regarding the behaviour of these beetles. I found what seems to be two males,both intent on mating with the same female (although,I'm not sure either was) and this involved lots of posturing by the males. They seemed to be almost 'fencing' with their antennae with heads raised and I am sure they were both sort of, clicking their heads/neck joints as well.

I attempted to capture it on the camera......just a very short clip that is a pretty poor effort but gives you some idea.....

I have read somewhere that the extended length of the head of these weevils may be associated with this activity.

I fully intended finding a female engaged in leaf rolling last spring but failed to do so and will double my efforts this year and hope that I'm lucky.

On a different note-I have not yet added to my moth trap finds. I have set it up twice in the past few weeks but sadly, the first occasion yielded just one (although a rather nice one that I've not had before and will add soon) and the second time, nothing! Not a single specimen, not even any flies.wasps or beetles....today is May 28th and I ran the trap again last night for just a couple of hours and have yet to check it out, so watch this space...

The woods where I found the weevils have been pretty productive for me over the last few visits and beneath the same hazel tree where I witnessed the 'weevil porn' I noticed this looper caterpillar hanging from a very delicate thread. It was spinning and wriggling and seemed to be trying to make its way back up to the leaf above,rather than down to the ground.

The soldier beetles are about now as well....

Again, this was on hazel and I think it's probably Cantharis pellucida but there are several similar ones including C.nigra and C.lateralis. I have a key somewhere to these and really should look it up.

From the same area came this fantastic looking crab spider...

This one seems to rejoice in the name of....'Common crab spider' and does appear to vary quite a lot in its markings (if I have the i.d. correct) with males having a very odd way of mating with females. He will grab hold of a female's legs and hold her until she stops struggling, then ties her down with threads of silk and finally, crawls underneath her to mate-how romantic!

My best find in this woodland though has to be this dragonfly. Not only is it just the second I have seen this year thus far (the other being a four spotted chaser) but is a first for me not only in these woods but anywhere locally....

Again,it's not the best shot but it was not settling for long and when it did, always in bright sunlight. I was very excited to see this one though as I am reasonably sure this is a Downy Emerald Dragonfly (Cordulia aenea) and looking at the abdomen shape a female. I think it is a fresh one too; the eye colour is bright.apple green in mature ones and this muddy brown in immature dragonflies.

I have only ever seen common darters, ruddy darters and southern hawkers at this site until now and after such a bad winter and cold spring, it really did make my day to find this 'newbie'. You can be sure I shall be looking out for more sightings and hoping for better photographic opportunities too. I think this makes three years in succession that I have discovered something new to me in these woods now. 

Misumena vatia

This spider (above) I do recognise. It is one that is common enough and quite easy to spot,unless it does its clever trick of changing colour to match the foliage. It can take a few days to effect a colour change but can vary from white to yellow, through to green.

Finding caterpillars is getting easier with each passing day it seems-here's another....

And another...

This one is not a caterpillar but a sawfly larva...

A the last for now...the tiniest you could imagine. I watched this emerge from an egg and photographed it soon after. It's a moth larva and was probably around 2mm at best...

Plenty of weevils to be found now and a real treat to find something out of the ordinary,or at least, different to the ones that I usually see...

Not actually sure about species here because of the mottled colour. Sitona or possibly Phyllobius? So many weevils,so little time!

To end this update I'll return to those woods where I have been finding lots of nice things this spring. Despite reading that butterfly sightings are well down again, I have found that locally at least, we do seem to be having a reasonable year and certainly well up in numbers and species from last year's appalling results...

A Large White Butterfly

Okay...more to come very soon including the results of last night's moth trapping.

Until the next time...

I reveal just how hoverflies keep fit...

I recently had to search through some older images that I have stored on the P.C. for a particular few shots and happened upon a couple of unused photos from earlier in the year.

And so now, they are at last seeing the light of day, as I'll start this update by adding them here...

A Weevil (possibly Stophosoma?)

This large weevil was one that I remember finding in mixed woodland on one of my many walks.

   

The varied carpet beetle (Anthrenus verbasci)

The little beetle pictured above was one that I found in the garden on a white daisy and photographed using a broken lens that had no front glass!

A couple of days ago, my other half said that she'd saved a large beetle that had somehow got itself in an argument with the hoover and lost. Rather than bin it, she had thoughtfully wrapped it in a sheet of kitchen towel, in case I might like to photograph it first?

On unwrapping the towel, I found the beetle you see pictured below-as you can see, it sustained several injuries but I decided it would make an ideal subject for focus stacking....

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR A LARGE VIEW

Lesser Stag Beetle (Dorcus parallelopipedus)

After much consideration, I went for the lesser stag beetle as an identity. Based on the shape of the pronotum and the spine on the tibiae. The other choice would have been a female stag beetle.

I recently posted a photo on flickr of some Sawfly Larvae that were still inside the eggs. It was a shot taken using flash to get as much detail as possible- but I also took a few more natural light photos that give a better overall impression of how they looked in relation to the leaf I found them on...

 Click on photos for a larger view

You can see just how destructive these can be to the host plant, in this case willow. They have only just emerged and yet are demolishing the leaf already.

On the same day I discovered these little things, I also came across some more eggs. This time bug eggs:or at least, bug eggshells, as I think the occupants of these had long gone..

I love those little hinges (or are they catches?) on the eggs. Whichever they are, I am sure they're purpose is to allow an easy exit when the time comes.

I had a second chance to create a focus stack of an insect when I happened upon a lacewing that had somehow managed to fall into a cattle-water trough. At least, I assume it fell in? I certainly didn't push it! In fact, I scooped out several deceased bugs and insects that I may also use for the same purpose.

I photographed these two at x10 mag.

I really will have to try and update the microscope objective from my £1 edition at some stage-it really doesn't have much going for it apart from it is useful to practice with and I suppose, to even get these results is O.K.

Now that most of the summer wild-flowers have finished for this year, it's left to the flea-bane to attract the insects and it does seem to be doing just that. I found a good number of hoverflies on flea-bane in local woodland and even managed to photograph one doing press-ups...

I have included a couple of focus stacked images in this blog entry and this next photo is a good example of how things can go wrong when attempting a hand-held stack in the field.

There's not doubt in my mind that this photo is sharper than a single image would have been, without using a tripod- but there are only two shots that comprise this stack:the third that would have completed it as intended and would have resulted in both wings being in focus, unfortunately was just a little too far out of line to use.

The only other thing to report in this entry is the return of the harvestmen. As you would expect at this time of year, they are emerging in numbers and a variety of shapes, sizes and colours right now...

Dicranopalus ramosus

Until the next time then...

A neglected Kentish orchard...

Immediately behind our house is an area of land that was once a thriving apple orchard, but has now been neglected for a number of years.

As nature reclaims the orchard, the habitat is gradually improving for insects and bugs. Until such time as the land is needed it makes for a great hunting ground, right on my doorstep.

I thought that I'd dedicate this blog entry entirely to creatures that I've found in this area in the past few days. Armed with my pith helmet and machete I ventured into the jungle...

This sawfly larva seems to be around in good numbers and I did find quite a few in a fairly small area of the old orchard.

I'm never sure on identity with these sawflies and so won't even attempt a guess here but I can show you another example of the same species-this one has some little hitch-hikers in the form of mites...

The next find was this very cool hopper. I think this one might be Aphrodes bifasciatus but once again not completely sure, as it's a variable species-I think it's safe to say that it's Aphrodes species though.

This species belongs to the cicadellidae family of leafhoppers.They feed by sucking plant sap from grass, shrubs or trees. This one was under 5mm in length.

My plant knowledge is pretty bad but I'm confident that this hopper is on Ribwort Plantain, there, that's left myself open to correction!

    

A couple more views

Each time I walk this particular area my footsteps are accompanied by the sound of crickets/grasshoppers calling but for some reason I've not got around to trying to photograph any-until now that is...

Roesel's Bush-cricket

I caught this one in full sun and it was quite lively, staying in one spot just long enough for a snap. It is Roesel's Bush-cricket (Metrioptera roeselii) a cricket that is separated from the similar Bog-Bush cricket by the pale yellow, or green border that edges the pronotum.

The song consists of long bursts of sound, said to resemble a dentist's drill.

CLICK ON PHOTO FOR LARGE VIEW

I'd have to say that this little grasshopper pictured above was something of a star find for me. Not because it is anything special by way of rarity or form but just that I was amazed by the facial markings that appeared when I put the macro lens on it. I've said it many times now but this is what makes macro photography so special for me-the unexpected detail revealed through the lens.

It'd be obvious to choose the mottled grasshopper as an identity for this one but in truth, I have no idea which species it is! It was only around 10-15mm and found in an area of long grass beside water.

Edit: Since posting this image I've been told by a flickr contact that it's actually a cricket rather than grasshopper and could even be the same species as the one in the first picture (Thanks Neil) and so probably best to ignore what I've written about a possible identity!

The water  is actually a small pond and the pond is home to a host of insects and bugs. The dragonflies that I've seen in reasonable numbers previously, have been hit badly by our awful weather this year and numbers are way below what I would expect.

There have been some though as this empty larval skin shows. I spotted this prehistoric looking thing whilst searching for damselflies at the water's edge.

If the dragonfly skin looks like a monster to you then here's something I found that demonstrates the other extreme. The world must look like a pretty big place to this little turtle bug I spotted...

A Turtle Bug- Podops inuncta

Leptopterna dolabrata

Leptopterna dolobrata is a common species of large grass bug (Miridae) and the males are always fully-winged but females are usually partly-winged, as in the photo of a female above.

I said that the grasshopper/cricket was a star find for me and it was, but I was equally excited by another stellar spot-this time a beetle. Not just any old beetle though, oh, no!

This stunning creature is a beetle from the Buprestidae family. Known as jewel beetles for obvious reasons, sometimes also as metallic wood-boring beetles. I don't find these too often, I think this may only be the third in all the time I've been bug-hunting and so it was quite a treat.

CLICK ANY PICTURE FOR LARGE VIEW

Butterfly sightings in the old orchard have been limited to mostly meadow brown and ringlet. A few small skippers have begun to appear though and I also spotted a couple of comma's on nettle. I once overheard two gents discussing species and heard one say "Oh no, I don't like skippers, they're not a pretty butterfly" well, firstly to me that sounds a ridiculous statement, and secondly, I don't agree-I think they are very nice and I love the subtle colours.

This fly, pictured above is not the sharpest of images but was taken very early one morning in the orchard. I was trying to get some natural light shots hand-held but the light was poor and even dragging every drop of light I could into the camera, it still required a low shutter speed. It was windy too and has made me decide that before I attempt a similar excursion, I must get a device to hold foliage steady for me.

Anyhow, I wanted to include this one as it's quite an interesting looking fly and has great eye colour.  I think these are marsh flies.

Sometimes you have to look underneath leaves to find insects and bugs and that's how I came to find this strange looking critter. It was underneath a willow leaf.

I have seen something similar to this with ladybirds where the ladybird has been attacked by a parasite-I'm pretty sure that this is an aphid that has suffered a similar fate.

On that final gruesome note, I'll put an end to this update. Quite a lot of finds then for a small area that I didn't really spend much time in. I may add to this at a later date with an update of anything else of interest that turns up.

Until the next time...