The first new insect type in 100 years...

It's probably about  a month since I was here last. But just because I have been away from the blog does not mean I have been idle. Oh no! Far from it. Where have I been, what have I been doing?

Let's start with where I have been: it used to be bear, now it's golden. Its motto is 'Eureka'. 'General Sherman' is almost certainly its oldest inhabitant  estimated to be 4,650 years old!  A well known valley here set  the hottest temperature ever recorded in the world- 134 degrees Fahrenheit. One visual clue? Okay here it is...

                  

Nope, I don't really understand that graph either; but it is supposed to represent the vowel shifts associated with 'California-English'. And so just in case you missed the not-so-subtle clue there: yes, I have been in California again.

Did I take my macro camera gear with me? You betcha!

Do I have photographs to share? You bet your sweet bippy I do...

Now I am no expert on North American insects but I think this might be Hylephila phyleus - The Fiery Skipper.

Not too sure about this darker one though. I spent way too long trying to research an identity for this little skipper and the closest I could get was Poanes melane - The Umber Skipper: hope that's right.

I do have more skipper photographs, plenty more to be exact as unlike here in the UK, there were still lots around: but let's skip those for now and move on to one of my favourite tiny creatures...

These  jumping spiders are pretty commonplace it seems, but a real challenge to photograph. I kinda wish I had taken the extreme macro lens, but was trying to travel as light as possible.

Then again, I wish I hadn't just invented an excuse as to why these photos aren't sharper. How about if I said that I was enjoying being in America, and in particular the Californian sunshine, so much, that I  was possibly not giving photography my fullest attention? 

Let's move on shall we. I know you don't all appreciate the beauty that I see in spiders. I cannot claim that I found this next creature myself, because, well, I didn't. But...I did manage to sneak a couple of pictures of what turned out to be a pretty impressive shieldbug, or stinkbug as they like to call them ...

Brochymena arborea, otherwise known as the Rough Stink Bug would be my guess for this one. Rough stink bugs are very well camouflaged and closely resemble the colour and texture of the tree bark on which they live. And in case you are looking at my photo and thinking to yourself 'It doesn't look well camouflaged to me', this one was underneath the bark, the other side was very similar in appearance to the bug.

There are a couple of other Bronchymena species that it might be, but I plumped for this one after much consideration. Frankly I was starting to get bug-eyed and losing the will to live anyway, so settled on it being Bronchy-thingy-wotsit...whatever I said at the start of this ramble.

Well if attempting to identify the last critter tried my patience, then this one, at least for a while, completely banjaxed it! At first sight I thought it might be Plectoptera (Stonefly) but that didn't seem to fit perfectly. Snakefly? Nope. Flying ant? Nope. Have a look at my photograph, see what you think...

While you are contemplating that image, did I mention that there was an earthquake during the second week of my visit? Yes, 4.5 or 4.7 depending on which report you read. It was surreal: it was about 10.30 at night and I was already in bed. You don't expect to be lying in bed and then the earth suddenly moves do you! Not in my bed you don't.

                                                     😂

Anyhow, back to the story; after doin' me 'ead in trying to  find out just what kind of creature this was, I had a lightbulb moment. Doesn't happen very often, but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I recalled reading something on the BBC website that might be pertinent, and sure enough, a quick Google revealed this...

Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit! A webspinner eh, and we now have them here in parts of the UK. But what is a webspinner? Here's the official word:

The order Embioptera, commonly known as webspinners or footspinners, are a small group of mostly tropical and subtropical insects, classified under the subclass Pterygota. The order has also been called Embiodea or Embiidina. Webspinners have up to 2.5cm long brown bodies and are the only insects that produce a silk webbing from their front legs, living in tunnels constructed from it to protect themselves from the elements and predators.

And so this actually turned out to be quite an intriguing find for me.

The story even made the Telegraph newspaper who ran this headline:

Britain gets first new insect type in 100 years, as webspinner from the Tropics found to have migrated to Surrey.

Too much excitement is bad for your ulcer, and so let's calm things down a little here; there was one particular insect that I had on my wish list for this visit, not going to reveal it just yet, but here's an anagram to tide you over...'tis a man'. C'mon, I may as well have told you outright huh?

This photograph (above) is 'Asclepias speciosa' the Showy Milkweed. It belongs to the Acanthus family of plants and seems to be well suited to the Californian growing conditions. It has these rather large (about 3 inches or so) fruit pods and attracts many insects, including aphids by the thousand, and a superb looking bug called a Large Milkweed Bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus). 

The large amount of aphids is of no consequence to the milkweed bugs as far as being a source of food. Milkweed bugs are herbivores and consume milkweed seeds. Compared to here in the Uk it seemed very late for nymphs to be still around, but not in California: in favourable conditions reproduction occurs all year round. 

An adult male and lower photo shows two nymphs.

Many fruit pods were alive with both adults and juveniles.

Apparently studies have show that northern populations of these bugs will migrate, whereas southern ones remain sedentary.

Well this blog update that began as a leisurely stroll through Californian wildlife, has already become something of a behemoth. I guess I should get to my exciting 'tis a man' finds; or MANTIS as I like to call them. Yes, I am sayin mantis rather than 'a mantis' for a very good reason.

Yes, the one thing I was hoping to find this visit was a mantis: timing seemed good and so I was hopeful that by the end of my stay  I'd be able to cross it off my bucket list.

Wednesday October 9th was my first day out with the camera searching for these amazing insects. Did I find one? No I did not.

What I did find though was FIVE! Yes...F-I-V-E !!

Well...paint me green and call me a cucumber!

I took squillions of photos, but somehow managed to keep the total to just six for this update - although I may get tempted to add more to future updates.

I was SO excited to see these that I almost had an accident! On the very first day as well: in their natural environment too. Fabulous insects full of intrigue and wonder for this English country boy. 

Now you are not going to ask me to identify these to species level are you? Oh, you are... bugger...erm... Arizona Mantis (Stagmomantis limbata) was one possibility, with European mantis (Mantis religiosa) being another. Or even possibly California Mantis (Stagmomantis californica)  for the green ones. Perhaps the darker/slimmer one might be something like Japanese (Tenodera aridifolia) or Chinese (Tenodera sinensis) Mantis?

What I do know is that they are stunning insects for me and after finding and photographing them, I was on a high for the rest of that day. I had several more encounters over the next days and weeks which I may get to share sometime soon.

Alright, time to call an end to all this indulgence for now. A couple of final thoughts to share: I discovered that I do not like dill pickles! Euwwww! I don't even like the look of corn dogs, let alone the thought of eating all that batter. As for the corn cob pipe, which looks like this...

No thanks friend. 

What did I enjoy? Well I now have a penchant for brownies and the root beer I tried was pleasant enough. 

Thanks for wading through this rather long update: I am most grateful to you -

A very quick postscript?

Okay, I will be concise: when I got to San Francisco airport to board a plane home, I was amazed, and more than a little excited, to find that INSECTS were on display throughout the part of the airport I was in...

Shame nobody spell-checked the text!

Another cold weekend, little wonder the tits are blue...

I had hoped to be able to begin this update by conveying that we have turned a metaphorical (or perhaps, more aptly, meteorological) corner. However here in sunny Kent this morning, the skies have become ashen and snow is once again in the forecast. Not to worry; I have given myself a good, stiff talking to and promised that it won't last more than a nano-second or two. 

Let's concentrate instead on the past few days, which have been most encouraging. 

As with many of my finds, and indeed photo opportunities at this time of year, they come when out walking the dog. In fact this first find came when dog-walking somebody else's doggies: Benny, the German Shepherd, and Dotty the Jack Russell...

Walking around yet another plot of land that will soon become a building site, I spotted a square of roofing felt which I carefully lifted to reveal these little beauties...

These are quite young, female slow worms. As I am sure you know, slow worms are not snakes but legless lizards: they have the  ability to shed their tails and blink with their eyelids. These were probably still in hibernation mode and so I quickly replaced the felt, which I assume had been placed there for exactly this reason.

After last year's debacle with a neighbour's cat destroying the blue-tit nest in the garden, I have taken some measures to try and protect the nest-box this time around...

OK, so it looks a bit messy, but if it works I shall be more than happy to put up with how it looks until nesting season is done for another year. It doesn't seem to have phased the birds at all because they have already been checking out the box again...

On the front wall of the house I saw my first Salticid of the year. A little jumping spider that was sitting in the sunshine. I don't like to photograph bugs and insects in direct sunlight and so I was attempting to provide some shade with one hand, whilst taking the photo using the macro in the other, hence the shallow depth of field...

In my little work studio that is situated at the bottom of the garden, I had a visit from a rather dopey wasp. I say it was dopey: mainly because it was quite docile and also when I asked it who is the current reigning monarch, it had no answer!

In previous years Comfort's Wood (a real favourite bug-hunting area) has by mid March seen both primrose and wood anemone in flower, as well as the odd violet and green bluebell shoots. That's green shoots by the way, not green bluebells. I have often seen bee-flies in the woods too. However, this year, on a recent visit, all I could spot were the primroses...

10:05am Saturday March 17

It's okay though, are we down about the weather? Noooo.... as Dame Vera Lynn sang back in 1939: 'Keep smiling through,Just like you always do,

Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away'. 

This next discovery should be enough to put a smile on anyone's face. I had seen this animal a few times on my early morning dog walks, but it took a few tries to get even a half-decent shot, as no sooner had I spotted it, than the dog did too...

Yes, it's an albino squirrel. According to the BBC the odds of a squirrel being born white is thought to be about one in 100,000.  Only a few white squirrels are albinos, recognizable by pink or blue eyes and the absence of pigmentation anywhere on the body. The gene for such an absence of the pigment, melanin, is recessive, so each parent must carry it to produce an albino squirrel. Albino squirrels have vision problems and are at a disadvantage in the wild. Many white squirrels  are genetic colour variants of the grey species, as are the less common black squirrel.

I have seen albino squirrels before, here in Kent, but not for a while. This was the last time I photographed one, it was 2016...

I think I may have saved my best find until last? Well, for me it has to be a favourite. I love the longhorn beetles and finding one out and about in March was a real treat for me. This is 'Rhagium mordax' and is a species of the Lepturinae subfamily in the long-horned beetle family. The adults favour open-structured flowers, particularly hawthorn and umbellifers where they feed on nectar and pollen. I have already seen some thorn in flower this year, but thought it was blackthorn, rather than hawthorn...

And that is a wrap as they say. Yes, another update comes to a close. Thank-you for reading this far and for your continued support: I very much appreciate you being there.

I am entering my seventh year of writing for 'The Wealden' and my latest little article can be found HERE as well as on the dedicated page accessible from the button at the top of the homepage, where you will also find every other article since 2012