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 don't mind the wet weather, it's fine by me...

It's still a case of trying to dodge the rain to photograph and record invertebrates for now, as the sunshine of a warm March declined into one of the wettest April months on record.
 May has begun in similar fashion: but on one of the few sunny mornings we've had I ventured out to check local ponds for damselflies and was pleased to find several had emerged at each of the ponds.

A Large Red Damselfly

Different weather conditions suits different creatures of course and I've noticed this year that whereas previous years have seen the tops of nettles becoming home to weevils, they seem to be full of earwigs now. Something to do with the dampness no doubt.

CLICK ANY PHOTO FOR A LARGER VIEW

This earwig, pictured above wasn't actually on nettle but unusually on a grass stem, overhanging the pond where I found the damselfly. It must have been there all night as it was soaked.

I took another shot from a different angle that had bluebells in the background and I quite like the effect.....

The other observation I've made is that some critters just don't seem to mind, or perhaps they're not even aware of, the bad weather. If you're brave enough to venture out with the camera, or perhaps in my case, stupid enough! There's always something to be found and photographed.It may not be what you were looking for-most times it isn't, but I can usually find something.

This attractive little beetle was sitting a'top a large grass seed-head and was making no attempt to shelter from the rain.

'Malachius bipustulatus' is the scientific name for this one, I can never remember that though (as with most of these complicated names) and so I prefer it's common name of Malachite Beetle.

Easily recognised by the twin red spots at it's rear and reasonably easy to see, even though it's only around 5-6mm by virtue of the fact it has the bright, metallic green elytra.

Malachite Beetle face-on close up

The other creature that loves all this wet weather of course is the humble snail. I've not seen any figures yet that say this is going to be a good year for them but if the numbers I've been seeing are anything to go by, they probably are.

The first shot here is a natural light photo, hence the paler, more subdued colours. As you can see in the photograph below the addition of flash, especially on a dull day, can result in a more saturated image. I possibly overdid the flash a tad here too as it's close to being blown. I wanted to share this shot though and frankly, couldn't be arsed to 'PS' the image!

Just hangin'

Returning to Coleoptera (Beetles) for a second. On yet another foray into what was once a woodland walk, but now resembles a paddy-field, I got my first sighting of a big red beetle that usually turns up in May each year. This is the Cardinal Beetle (Pyrochroa serraticornis) that at about 15mm plus, is treble the size of the malachite beetle.

Sometimes called a red-headed cardinal beetle, for obvious reasons. There is also another very similar beetle that has a black head. I don't think I need to tell you what that one gets called?

A dorsal view of the cardinal beetle

On one of the numerous days when outside photography was not an option, I decided to do some work on tidying the garden shed (again) and when moving things around, out from behind a length of wood crawled this vine weevil.

As I'm constantly being told, vine weevils are very destructive in the garden and to be avoided at all costs.

Even so, I couldn't bring myself to destroy such a wonderful looking creature and my view is that there's a place for everything in this world and that includes vine weevils.

I just hope that it's happy in its new home.......next door's garden!

I'll leave you with that thought-until the next time.....

I'm a meanderthal man...

If you look up 'Meanderthal' in the urban dictionary, you'll see that it's a word that suits me well-not only that but it might be applied to this blog entry with equal merit.


From http://www.urbandictionary.com

Meandethal: An old person who walks about at an extremely slow pace. This word is a combination of 'meander' which means to walk slowly with no apparent destination, and 'neanderthal' which refers to something old, ancient or prehistoric.

Definition 2 : Conversationalist who wanders from one subject to another with no apparent point, never reaching the end of the story.


Well, definition one certainly describes how I appear at least to wander about aimlessly whilst out bug-hunting:and slow would also be apt for fear of missing anything. As for the old,ancient or prehistoric part? Well I'm no Justin Bieber that's for sure!(Thankfully.)


Definition 2 Could be useful to quantify this particular blog entry because unless my writing skills are more deft than I myself feel they are,I may well be struggling to keep on the straight and narrow.


Shall I explain?... Easy! Easy!...just "yes please" would have been sufficient.


O.K. What I'll do to placate you after suffering this much text at the start of a blog-entry is add a pretty little picture here and then go on to 'add filling to the sandwich' thereafter...

I was pleased that my photograph (above) of an Orange-Tip Butterfly was published recently in the newspaper 'Kent On Sunday' in their section 'Images Of Kent' I apologise for the quality of the photo reproduced here but it was the best I could manage from a pdf download of the newspaper page.

Why am I sharing this with you? Firstly I've taken the liberty of assuming that you'll be interested and secondly, it demonstrates nicely just how the weather has impacted on my bug-hunting of late-even the butterflies have all but disappeared for the time being.

And all this brings us back to my opening gambit of trying to pre-warn you that consequently, this entry may wander a little with no real theme other than that of a total lack of bugs and insects due to our great British climate.

What to do when the weather is against you?


Having been experimenting with image stacking and knowing that this is for the most part an indoor sport, I have spent a few afternoons with all manner of tubes, bellows, lenses and frankly, ridiculous, Heath Robinson looking contraptions trying to produce some quality images this way but mainly managing to try my patience!

This bee pictured above was one of my first efforts and is a full-frame shot that although shows promise, was not exactly what I was hoping for with either lighting or detail. My problem to some extent is that the better these stacked shots get, the more critical I become of them. I suppose though that it's better than getting complacent and thinking that it's all just a bit too easy?

Having fiddled with the lighting and changed to a different lens, I progressed to this shot of a common earwig. Once again I was reasonably pleased with the outcome but was still looking to improve my technique.


The other major consideration with photographing tiny critters in this manner is the prerequisite of a non-moving subject: by that I mean that they be deceased! Now bug-hunting is one thing, but to then add in searching out dead creatures is even by my own twisted values, verging on 'weird'. Of course there are those who are willing to kill their subject to obtain the best possible image but that rankles with me and kind of goes against the grain.


Dead creatures are as much a part of nature as are those in the land of the living of course and once you begin to look for them, are not too difficult to locate but I'm not sure it's something that'll become 'de rigueur' for this particular nature lover.

CLICK ANY PHOTO TO VIEW LARGE AND ON BLACK

On this final image I had started to get to grips with the whole process a little more and had also realised that the lack of image sharpness was probably due to vibration and not lens quality. I resolved to improve again on my set-up by making a new rail/stage and at the same time, add some extra lighting before attempting any-more focus stacked images.


I'm pleased to be able to report that I've now carried out the improvements but have yet to find the time to road-test them.

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Following on from a very warm March, April has been a real let-down and spring seems to have been put on hold for now. It has just been too cold and wet for most invertebrates.There has emerged something of a pattern lately though, in that the day seems to start well with early sunshine following on from even earlier, or indeed, overnight frost-that then degenerates into a grey gloom for the rest of the day.


Perhaps in the absence of anything else an early morning meander would be an idea?
"Yes, that's what I'll do" I thought as my head hit the pillow at the end of yet another wet and bug-less day, and so it was that the very next morning at 6.30am I was out and about 'meanderthal-ling' all over the place.

Early morning Hoverfly

On some long grass beside a local pond I spotted this little hoverfly that had obviously spent the night perched here and as it was still too cold for it, it made an easy subject to photograph without fear of it flying off.

At more-or-less the same location I saw another beefly perched in the same position as the one I photographed a while ago. Perhaps I'm getting better at finding these because until this year I've not seen this behaviour at all and now I've witnessed it twice in as many weeks.
It's interesting too that once again it's one of the paler specimens.

I decided to opt for natural light only for these early morning shots:it means that there's a little less detail but set against that is the gain of a more naturalistic light and hence, hopefully, photo.

Since I ventured out to get these few shots the weather has worsened again and now even dawn photography sessions are impossible. Until things improve, there's always the image stacking to return to I suppose but what we really need is the return of spring and so if anyone has influence in such matters?

Until the next time then...

"I've got a pocketful of bees".....

Having spent sometime now suffering the indignity not to say inconvenience of the dreaded 'man-flu' that culminated in being woken one night by the sound of my own voice calling out "I've got a pocketful of bees"  (yes, I was asleep but had dreamt I had a pocket full of live bees!),I was so pleased when today at last I felt the urge to pick up the camera again.

My enforced sabbatical, probably not the best choice of descriptive word actually, as I believe a true sabbatical lasted in excess of 2 months and even I couldn't claim my suffering was of those dimensions but it did keep me away from the real world for a while and long enough for Lennon's terrific 'Watching The Wheels' to keep running around my head-alongside that is, the little guy with the lump-hammer trying to blast his was out of my skull.

Yesterday when I rose from yet another fitful night's sleep (you don't think I'm laying this flu thing on a little too thick do you?........ Oh good)- my other half said to me " You're still coughing quite badly" "I know" I said, "I've been practising all night too".

I'm rambling already-perhaps I'm still delirious? Nurse! Nurse!....

Ah! I remember now, photography.....

What I was thinking of impressing on you was that in terms of insects and bugs to photograph, I didn't really miss out. The weather has been so poor of late in this part of the world that subjects would have been next to impossible to find anyway.
And so, (finally, he's arrived at the point of the blog entry?),to ease myself back in with nothing more stressful than a stationary target, I decided on taking a few photos of the ice that had formed in our back garden.

CLICK ON PHOTOS TO VIEW LARGER & ON BLACK

(These do seem to show more detail against the black background)

These shots were all taken of the ice that formed on our bird-bath. I used a diffused flash as the light is still quite poor at this time of year. It's amazing just what patterns and formations there are. I could look at these for ages and pick out different things each time.

The ice pictured above is just something that formed on the very edge of a plant pot.

This last image is a closer view of an ice block

After an hour or so in the garden taking these photographs, I began to realise that it wasn't quite as mild as I had assumed from my chair in our cosy living room and probably the best course of action would be to 'leg-it' back to that very same chair!

By then my camera hand was f-f-f-f-freezin' cold,so much so that I made myself a hot coffee and then spilled it in my lap- but actually enjoyed the sensation. Yes, it has been a cold February in Kent, so much so that when our electricity bill arrived this morning it had a letter of condolence attached to it.

Freezing temperatures, a dose of the flu (did I mention that already?),a dearth of inverts to photograph, that has to be winter's last efforts to depress me right? From now on things are set to change-I can feel it in my water, although, thinking about it further, it may not be change I can feel in my water? It could be 'Lem-sip'?

No, that's winter's last hoorah! I'm sure of it.

Until the next time then...

Postscript: The news of my work in print that I spoke of a couple of entries ago has now become a reality and I shall be contributing an article with photos to a local free paper 4 weekly from now on.
I'll try and post a copy of each one as it appears on the 'Published Articles' page of this blog. I have already added the one for Feb.