Not a wiglet

12 Thursday Jan 2023

Tags

ground beetle, insects in leaf litter, juvenile ground beetle, juvenile insects

Well, I’m not often right but I’m wrong again! So, when is a wiglet not a wiglet? When it’s a ground beetle, one of the Carabidae family. After reading Tuesday’s post, the top local biodiversity recorder sent me a message, saying he thought the juvenile insect was a ground beetle (thank you, Graham) and, after googling, I believe he’s absolutely right.

230112 ground beetle juvenile

My photos didn’t really do the tiny creature justice – you can see some amazing macro images by photographer Paul Iddon, especially of its impressive mouth parts, on the Open Photography Forums website. Also, while googling I found an article on the website of the University of Kentucky, Recognizing Insect Larval Types, which includes excellent information and diagrams to aid identification of insect in their early stages of life. Some of the terminology is American but it’s well worth a look if you’re interested in the subject, and there’s a downloadable pdf.

It’s a beetle

19 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by sconzani in insects

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beetles, British beetles, ground beetle

First, I read that there are around 4000 species of beetle in Britain. But I remained optimistic and figured I might be able to narrow it down by location – it was bumbling along on the ground, so perhaps it was a ground beetle (the Carabidae). Next, I read that there are 374 species of ground beetle. But I continued to be optimistic and thought I might be able to narrow it down by shape or colour. Then, I looked through the gallery of photos on the Coleoptera website and also on the Nature Spot website, and realised that these creatures are a whole lot more difficult to identify than I first thought. So, here’s a beetle, a rather gorgeous beetle with a metallic green sheen, but a beetle none-the-less.

210319 beetle

117/365 Beetling along

27 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature, seaside

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

#365DaysWild, British beetles, green beetle, ground beetle

190427 ground beetle

Storm Hannah has been making her presence felt since yesterday evening and, though the sun came out late morning, the wind is still blowing a gale. I headed down to Cardiff Bay to see if the storm had blown any interesting birds in but found nothing unusual – in fact, very few birds at all were braving the weather. So, I tootled along to the beach at the base of Penarth Head cliffs, where it was a little more sheltered, and there I found a new fossil – always a bonus! – and this cute little ground beetle plodding purposefully along amongst the detritus, not at all interested in having its photo taken.