Tag Archives: British insects

190/366 For the love of thistles

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in insects, nature, plants, wildflowers

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Many people would consider the thistle – any thistle, all thistles – to be a weed but one look at these photos will show just what a diverse range of insects find the humble thistle an essential source of food. From flies and hoverflies, bees and wasps, to beetles and butterflies, the Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense) is a favourite of them all. And when the flowers are finished, it will be the turn of the birds to find nourishment in the thistle seeds. What an amazing wildflower this is!

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186/366 Miscellaneous minis

04 Saturday Jul 2020

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These are a few recent insect that have caught my eye …

200704 1 common green shieldbug

First up, the 4th instar of a Common green shieldbug that was walking along the outside of a building as I passed. These mini-beasties go through five different instars (stages) before becoming adults. For more see A (shield)bug’s life, September 2016.

200704 2 Grypocoris stysi

A flower bug that loves umbellifers, Grypocoris stysi. You can read more about him/her in my previous blog, Get a Gryp-o!, July 2016.

I found this Orange ladybird browsing on leaves covered with a white mould, their favourite food. See more on these little cuties in A Blast of Orange, July 2017.

200704 5 wasp black ichneumonid

I’ve been spotting a lot of Ichneumonid wasps this year. Most are quite difficult to identify, as you need to photograph them from several different angles to capture all the identifying features and I find they don’t usually stay still long enough.

200704 6 ladybird harlequin

And, last for today, what I think is a Harlequin ladybird, judging from the patterns on the now-empty pupa case. When newly emerged, ladybirds are often pale coloured and dot-less – the colours darken and the spots emerge in their first few hours as adults.

148/366 Tiny surprises

27 Wednesday May 2020

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When you’re bright red, it’s hard to hide in the grass but it was still a nice surprise to spot this lovely Cardinal beetle, and it didn’t seem to mind me picking it up for a closer look.

200527 cardinal beetle

I was looking for the pupa cases of moths on a Wych elm when I spotted this weevil. It looked to me like a Nettle weevil, so it was a bit of a surprise to find it up in a tree.

200527 weevil

Speaking of weevils … As my eyesight is not very good, I sometimes don’t notice very small creatures, and this is a case in point. I had spotted the hoverfly, Eristalis nemorum, so took a few photos of that and didn’t spot the teeny weeny weevil until I looked at the photos on my laptop when I got home.

200527 eristalis nemorum

And the same is also true of the smaller bug in this wild rose. I saw the Swollen-thighed beetle, on the right, but not the other creature, until later. I love these little surprises from Mother Nature.

200527 wild rose and insects

97/366 Wild word : stylopised

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by in insects, nature

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Stylopised: Entomology; (of a bee or other insect) parasitised by a stylops (Oxford Dictionary).

200406 Stylopised Andrena bee (1)

As with most tales about parasites, this one is both extremely fascinating and more than a little revolting. My photos here show a mining bee, one of the Andrena species, possibly Andrena scotica (thanks to local entomologist Liam Olds for that identification). The bee has been stylopised – the two small orange-ish bumps protruding from its abdomen are parasites, females of the Stylops family of Twisted-wing flies (though, due to the strangeness of these insects, there is some dispute about whether they’re really part of the fly family at all). Though the male flies do hatch and fly around, the females spend their entire life inside their host – the males inseminate them in situ and the females lay their eggs inside their host. Once the eggs have hatched into grubs, those grubs leave the host and wait on a leaf or flower for an unsuspecting bee to arrive, climb aboard and burrow into the bee, and the cycle begins again.

200406 Stylopised Andrena bee (2)

I had never heard of these Stylops parasites until I saw an incredible close-up image of them on Twitter last week, and then just happened to photograph them myself while out walking on Saturday. If you’re on Twitter, Ed Phillips’ amazing photo can be seen here  and you can read more about Stylops on the Royal Entomological Society’s website.

55/366 Three mini-beasties

24 Monday Feb 2020

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During yesterday’s brief interlude of sunshine, when I was out searching for wildflowers, I happened across these three little mini-beasts – I’m sure there’d be a lot more out and about if we just had a little more of that precious sunshine.

200224 Marmelade hoverfly

The tiny critter above is a Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus), and the two below are, I think, Yellow dung flies (Scathophaga stercoraria). I think I can safely say there will soon be more Yellow dung flies flitting around.

200224 Yellow dung flies

46/366 Sunbathing

15 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in insects, nature, winter

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Obviously, these photos were not taken today, as Storm Dennis is currently blasting the British Isles – though, in truth, here in south Wales we are not getting quite as much rain as I expected, nor are we being battered as severely as we were by the fiercely gusting winds that accompanied last weekend’s Storm Ciara, for which I am extremely grateful.

200215 common green shieldbug (1)

My photos of this Common green shieldbug (Palomena prasina) were taken a week ago, on a warm (for the time of year) sunny day. And, as I have just read in a tweet by SEWBReC, our local biodiversity records centre, that ‘Now is a good time of year to spot shieldbugs sunbathing on (rare!) sunny days’, I thought I would make this little sunbather my critter of the day.

200215 common green shieldbug (2)

323/365 Autumn critters

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in autumn, insects, nature, plants

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It may be late autumn, with shortening days, chill winds and cooling nights but, when the sun comes out as it did yesterday, the insects also come out to warm themselves and feed. During my walk around Cosmeston I spotted a late Red admiral butterfly and then, further on, where ivy was still flowering, a host of flying mini-beasties: hoverflies, various bees and wasps. And, near them, tucked away further down on a bramble leaf, even a caterpillar, probably a moth larva though I’m not sure which species.

245/365 Bush-basking cricket

02 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature

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I’ve been back to the field where I saw Friday’s ‘grappling grasshoppers’ to investigate the other interesting insects I noticed. This is one of them, a gloriously ‘armoured’ Dark bush-cricket (Pholidoptera griseoaptera).

190901 dark bush-cricket (1)

According to the Buglife website, you ‘must creep up on them to see them properly’ but, luckily, I had my zoom lens, plus this creature was probably quite confident in its ability to out-leap me if necessary and was too happy basking in the sunshine to be bothered about me.

190901 dark bush-cricket (2)