12 Friday Sep 2025
Here’s another of this year’s new bug finds, a handsome little mirid bug coloured a rich brown and orange, Megacoelum infusum. I found it on a local Oak tree, which was fortunate, as there’s a very similar looking bug (Megacoelum beckeri) that lives on Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). The British Bugs website entry for this species says it is both vegetarian and carnivorous, supping on Oak sap and tiny insects.
28 Saturday Jun 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British miridae, bug, bugs on Field maple, bugs on Sycamore, Deraeocoris flavilinea, mirid bugs, Miridae
How bugs are able to colonise places as rapidly as many seem to do always surprises me, and this new-to-me Mirid bug is one of those. Deraeocoris flavilinea was first reported in the UK in 1996.
In the interim 29 years between then and now it has made itself at home across most of the southern and central parts of Britain. Perhaps the fact that this bug’s larvae feed on Field maple and Sycamore, both very common tree species, has helped with its rapid colonisation efforts.
I saw my first, the nymph shown above, on 12 May and, at the end of May, saw my first adult. Since then, I’ve seen several more, even had one walking sedately up my arm, down again and on to my hand, which allowed for a nice close up as my final photo shows.
10 Tuesday Jun 2025
Tags
British miridae, British plant bugs, bugs on Oak, insects on Oak trees, Miridae, oak tree, plant bug on Oak, Rhabdomiris striatellus
Here’s another bug that I’d never seen before this year and I’ve been lucky enough to find both a nymph and an adult. This is Rhabdomiris striatellus, one of the UK’s 200-plus species of plant bugs in the Miridae family. (I’ve probably only seen about a tenth of them so I’ve got plenty more discoveries yet to make.)
As this bug’s larvae feed on unripe catkins, it is usually found on or around Oak trees, and that’s certainly where I found the adult bug, shown below. The nymph above had probably fallen out of an Oak tree, or had decided to go walkabout to find a neighbouring Oak; I found it on the railings of my local park, where I’ve found so many invertebrates.
Rhabdomiris striatellus overwinters as an egg, hatches out in mid Spring, then passes through a series of instars until it reaches adulthood. The adults can then be seen from May through to July. Those timings certainly fit with my discoveries; I found the nymph on 25 April and the adult, in a different location, on 3 May.
earthstar 
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