Botanising, with insects

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by sconzani in animals, birds, insects, molluscs, nature, slugs

Tags

Bloody-nosed beetle, Brynna, Click beetle, Glamorgan Botany Group, grasshopper, moths, Nettle weevil, rooster, sheep, slugs

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I returned from my last Botany Group walk with more photos of insects – and other living creatures – than plants. The Gorse weevil got a blog of its own yesterday; now here are some of our other finds.

Firstly, a couple more weevils, both on nettle and the second one is definitely a Neetle weevil (Phyllobius pomacues) but I’m not sure about the first. The Click beetle was also found on nettle.

These two were at a farm we passed through; the sheep was lording it over the home paddock and the rooster was king of the farmyard. Both handsome dudes!

A nice little grouping of slug species, with their small friend, the Granny Grey, and a grasshopper. There were lots of these hopping round on grass and rushes in a boggy field. It may be a juvenile Meadow grasshopper but I’m not 100% sure.

A little flock of Micropterix cathella moths were feasting on this grass flower, and there were lots of other small moths, probably one of the Bactra species, plus an unidentified spider with a distinctive striped body.

And last, but certainly not least, these Bloody-nosed beetles (Timarcha tenebricosa). The photo on the left shows the chubby larva and on the right is the adult beetle munching on a grass stalk.

The blood spewer

07 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, nature photography

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

beetle, Blood spewer beetle, Bloody-nosed beetle, British beetle, Brynna Woods

With a name like blood spewer, you might expect this post to be about some gigantic ravaging beast, but no! This is a beetle, large for a beetle at 2cm long, but nevertheless slow and bumbling and flightless and harmless, and really rather delightful, with body parts of a very pretty, slightly metallic-looking blue-purple-black. We found it amongst the bracken during a walk through Brynna Woods, in East Glamorgan, earlier this week.

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Timarcha tenebricosa, or the bloody-nosed beetle, as it is more commonly known, gets its gruesome name from a defence strategy it has developed in response to predators. When threatened, it discharges small globules of unsavoury red fluid from its mouth. It seems we weren’t perceived as threatening, as this little creature didn’t perform its party trick for us.

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This is a leaf beetle, most often seen during the spring and summer months in grassy areas, in hedgerows and on heathland in Britain and in southern and central Europe. It is particularly partial to nibbling on the plant Lady’s bedstraw, and has the most amazing-looking segmented antennae and lower legs, as you can see in my photos. Ours was a charming and colourful encounter on a rather grey day.

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