16 Friday Feb 2024
I can’t remember what led me to check the few bundles of dried Ash keys still hanging from a short tree alongside the path I walked this morning but I’m very glad I did because I found this stunning little weevil lurking amongst the keys. I’m sure this is the earliest date I’ve ever seen a weevil, more evidence if it were needed of how mild this winter has been.
29 Monday May 2023
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I love weevils! I’ve probably said that before; I’ll undoubtedly say it again. So, I was grinning like a Cheshire cat when I spotted these gorgeous mini-beasties.
Perched on the tiny bundles of fruit of the plant they’re named for, these are Figwort weevils (Cionus scrophulariae). Their furry looking coats of beige and brown and light grey are pure decoration (imagine having a coat like that to wear!), and probably also good camouflage. And their impressive snouts are used for sucking the juices from their plant hosts (they can also be found on Mullein), though I don’t think these two weevils were feeding – I think they were egg-laying, as I noticed tiny blobs of yellow emerging from their rear ends, and I don’t think it was pooh.
Amazingly, I managed to find a Figwort weevil larva, something I’ve never seen before. I’ve lightened this photo to show the detail a little more clearly but, as the UK Beetles website explains, they are actually dark brown, ‘almost black, and covered in a shiny and sticky secretion which makes them distasteful to predators and is thought to give some protection from parasites’. I actually find it quite difficult to comprehend that this slimy slug lookalike morphs into the complicated character that is the adult Figwort weevil.
22 Wednesday Feb 2023
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Last Sunday was very Spring-like, the sunshine warm on your back if you were out of the wind. Nature thought so too and I was delighted to see some insects out and about. Though my first butterfly of the year, a Brimstone, didn’t linger long enough for a photo, the abundance of Gorse weevils on the flowering Gorse bushes were much more obliging.
And, on a rather large splatter of dog poo, which the dog’s owner hadn’t bothered to pick up, Dung flies were out in good numbers. Which is probably one of the very few reasons I would ever want to look closely at dog poo.
13 Monday Jun 2022
From my previous posts, including the recent A weirdness of weevils, I’m sure it’s obvious that I’m a huge fan of weevils, but I’d never given a thought to their life cycle until I found these leafmines. The mines are the work of the larvae of the weevil Orchestes signifer. The gallery mines follow the edges of Oak leaves before terminating in a small blotch. At that point, the larvae make themselves a case by cutting out the circular blotch, and, snugly encased, they drop to the ground to pupate. You can find a photo of the black-and-white adult weevil on the British Leafminers website.
01 Wednesday Jun 2022
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They’re tiny – some more so than others; they’re odd looking – those snouts; they come in a variety of colours – that red; and they’re very very cute. During recent walks, I’ve been seeing lots of weevils, of various sizes, shades and shapes, sunning themselves on leaves on trees and shrubs, so do cast an eye their weevil way.
07 Thursday Apr 2022
Woot! This teeny tiny beastie is my first weevil of 2022, as you can probably guess from the yellow flower it’s sitting on, a Gorse weevil (Exapion ulicis). I’ve read that they usually feed by poking their snout (properly known as a rostrum) into gorse stems and seeds but this one had its snout so firmly inserted into the flower that it looked like it would almost tip over.
07 Tuesday Apr 2020
Posted in insects, nature, spring, wildflowers
Two’s company.
Three’s a crowd.
Uh oh!
Four’s … an orgy? The Gorse weevils I observed during yesterday’s exercise walk in a local park were blatantly ignoring the social distancing rules. Please don’t act like Gorse weevils!
