NATIONAL INSECT WEEK : HOVER FLIES WHICH KILL DAFFODILS, AND BEETLES IN HATS

National Insect Week happens once every two years - and this is one of those years. So here's a little nudge to watch out for insects around you - maybe to post about them?

I've three to mention.

Merodon equestris (Narcissus Fly)

The first was a bit of a disaster. You know how I said I was sitting in a friend's garden when, instead of politely drinking tea I leapt up and started taking photographs instead?

Well, while I was looking at leaves the sun had chosen to spotlight, I noticed a hoverfly on a leaf. It wasn't moving. It was just sitting there. Ridiculously, I was worried about it straight away. Was it ill? Hungry? Dying?

I say 'ridiculously' because I'm not above sliding my fingers along a stem to rid it of aphids, or clapping my hands together to kill a gnat if it flies into my house. So why did I bother about this hoverfly? (Hover Fly? I'm never sure whether to stick the hover with the fly or leave them apart.) Well, for one things, there's something profoundly different between an individual and a crowd. And for another, it looked a bit like a bumble bee. And for another - when I began this blog I thought a hover-fly is a hover fly is a hoverfly. When I found there are 270 identified species of hoverfly in Britain (*1) . . .  I was . . . . . . gob-smacked! And when I began to peer at those around me with my camera (which I use as a microscope as well as a telescope and as a recorder of images) I was overwhelmed by the beauty in the variety of their colours. So - as you may have gathered - I have a bit of a soft spot for hoverflies.

Ignoring the tea, I tipped a little sugar onto a saucer, added a little warm water, stirred it up and dripped the resulting syrup onto the leaf as a kind of rescue package. I had no idea, no idea whatsoever whether hoverflies drink sugar water . . . but it looked like a bee . . . so I treated it like a bee.

Merodon equestris (Narcissus Fly)

After a while, I gently lifted it and took it to the apple tree and lowered it onto a blossom. It must have been recovering by then, I reckoned, because it immediately spurned that particular blossom, and chose another for itself. I didn't know if it would have any interest in apple-blossom-nectar . . . but a little sugar and a little sunshine was all I had to offer.

I took it's picture and left it to its own devices.

Next . . . look through google images . . . find a possible ID . . . upload the photo to iSpot and hope I was wrong. But I wasn't.

This hoverfly had been sitting on a waning daffodil leaf. This hoverfly was a Narcissus Fly. This hoverfly was a Merodon equestris. This kind of hoverfly lays an egg in the crown of a daffodils. The grub burrows into the bulb, takes up residence and turns it to slush. End of plant! (*2) Oh. Bother. I thought hoverfly larvae eat aphids. Why do there have to be exceptions?

Next up.
Another Hover Fly.

Meliscaieva auricollis?

For all that I've said how often people stop to talk when I'm taking photos, by fortunate chance rarely are they neighbours. But I'd started to take photos of this hover fly (Meliscaieva auricollis?) when a neighbour came down the hill. Just as she hoved a few feet away, a bee (honey bee? a bit too fast to tell) bomb dived the hoverfly and away they flew.
"Oh, you've frightened it!" I exclaimed. Aloud.
(Why do I talk aloud? I don't know. I just do)
My neighbour stopped.
"Not you! You didn't frighten it! It was a bee!"
Then realising she might not understand, I explained about hoverflies as we walked on together . . . and how interesting they are . . . and that although I don't know why I'm interested in finding out which one is which kind . . . I just am . . . even if I forget straight away and have to go back to start every time I see a new one . . . and she seemed to think this was all perfectly acceptable. Phew!

Next up.

This beetle.

A Dor Beetle (Geotrupes) ?

Probably a Dor Beetle

I found it walking along a path through a wood in Somerset. I photographed it from above, from its side and face on. Er. Where is its face? This, I decided, was a spooky monster! Where are its eyes?

Internet to the rescue . . .  to the bizarre . . . to the wonderful. That some beetles have eyes on the tops of their heads so they can see what's above them as well as where they're going.

And, thence . . . to beetles with hats on.

Scientists in South Africa have demonstrated that dung beetles, needing to make a fast get-away with their haul of dung (with a possible wife thrown in) can use the Milky Way as a guide when working out the most direct route from pile to burrow. They aren't interested in stars - just that bright straight line overhead. To check this out, the scientists made little hats for the beetles. Some were clear. Some were dark. The beetles with clear hats could walk in straight lines. Those with darkened ones couldn't. I doubt their counterparts in English woodland would have any chance of walking in a straight line over twigs and under leaves - let alone see the Milky Way through branches and clouds . . . but if you find the idea of beetles in hats appealing - you can read all about them here.

Will you be posting about insects in the next few weeks?

If so, let me know and I'll put the links here.

(Regardless of where you live!)

Here's one from Philip Strange (Science and Nature Writing) 
Love Bugs and Other Surprises at Bantham Beach in South Devon

Probably a Dor Beetle

*1 What are Hoverflies? - on the Microscopy Site
*2 Narcissus Bulb Fly - on the Pacific Bulb Society Site

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NEW ADDITIONS TO THE 'IDENTIFYING THINGS' PAGE

ALL ABOUT HOVERFLIES - Including diagram of body parts. This is on the Microscopy site - which includes a 'POND LIFE IDENTIFICATION KIT'.
WHAT IS THAT INSECT? - On site of the Royal Entomological Society
MIRODON EQUESTRIS (NARCISSUS BULB FLY)  - On Pacific Bulb Society site.
BUG GUIDE.NET - Iowa State University Department of Entymology
NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY - DRAGISA SAVIC (Serbia) - Large collection of clear photographs with IDs - flora, fauna, fungi of the kind you may not find elsewhere. A good place for rusts and lichens. Take time for an eye-opening browse.
IAN BEAVIS ON FLICKR - Photo Gallery with IDs of insects, amphibians etc. . . 

Remember - National Insect Week - 20th - 26th June

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NATIONAL INSECT WEEK

It's National Insect Week (23rd - 29th June 2014) - which is why all insects have gone away. On holiday, I suppose. Celebrating their smallness, their essentialness, their general interestingness. It's annoying though because I'd hoped to write you an interesting post - show some brilliant pictures - that kind of thing.

It was certainly sunny enough when I went looking. And when I went looking again. And a third time. Maybe they didn't like the cheerful breeze. Or, maybe, as I said, they'd gone on holiday. Having a special week having gone to their heads.

But I did find some.

There were masses of Swollen Thighed Beetles on white flowers. A bit small, I thought. Or maybe I remembered them wrong. Beauty expands in memory.

Swollen-thighed Beetle
(Oedemera (Oedemera) nobilis)
June 25th 2014

It's hard to catch their colours. Sometimes they seem blue; a bright, iridescent blue. And at others -they look green.

Broad Centurion Fly
(Chloromyia formosa)
June 25th 2014

The Broad Centurion Fly really is green. Or, rather, it has a green body. Its wings are brown.

Aphids and ants
June 25th 2014

Ants farming these blackfly on a broken elderberry twig are brown too. These I found specially interesting for I associate aphids with gardens, not with hedgerows. Hedgerows usually seem to hold themselves in a better, healthy balance. I'd hazard a guess this balance is disturbed when bushes and trees are trimmed back. It's only a guess though. I hope you can bear to look.

Large Skipper
(Ochlodes sylvanus)
June 25th 2014

This Large Skipper is another matter. A beautiful orange and a pick-me-up for those of you who need to recover after being confronted with aphids! The puzzle here is why it's called a 'Large' Skipper for it's only about half an inch across.

Riband Wave Moth
(Idaea aversata)
June 25th 2014

This Riband Wave Moth may have been just as beautiful when it was alive - but it's been caught in a spider's thread. (I wish spiders counted as insects because I found some interesting ones. Another time.)

There were bumble bees bent on being busy behind bramble twigs and leaves. I lurked for them a bit; then gave up. I'd already been chasing Ringlet butterflies up and down and was beginning to feel a little self-conscious. There may have been few insects but there were masses of walkers - mostly older women. Maybe National Insect Week coincides with a festival for feminine fitness for the post-sixty-fives. Some were walking in regimented hoards. No time to stop. Others were more on an amble - and a chat. It's hard to chase a butterfly and be polite.

Honey Bee
(Apis mellifera)
June 25th 2014

This honey bee was a bit easier to snap. It kept moving from blackberry flower to blackberry flower and not staying still even then but at least it stayed on the same bush long enough to show it was there. Imagine being able to fly on such thin wings!

I don't know what this is.
There are masses of them in the convolvulus flowers.
Maybe there are more elsewhere - but they show up well against the white.
They are 3mm long at the most.
June 25th 2014

And there are always these little insects on bindweed. What are they? I don't know. Just little black insects who like to live in convolvulus trumpets. Cheerful creatures. (I think.)

The slogan for National Insect Week is 'Little Things that Run the World'. Maybe this little black dot is supreme ruler of us all. I nodded respectfully. Took its portrait - and moved on.

Have you spotted any insects recently?

* * *

I've found a new site that may be of interest to readers in the British Isles (and fun to browse for others). As well as other information about butterflies and great help in identifying them, it has charts of which to look for each month. Here's a link to butterflies which fly in July.

Here's its home page - Steven Cheshire's British Butterflies

* * *

Here's the link to a previous National Insect Week post on Loose and Leafy. 'Followed Trees and Incidental Insects' (July 3rd 2012). There you can find a
Swollen-thighed Beetle -(Oedemera (Oedemera) nobilis)
Honey Bee - (Apis mellifera)
Garden Bumble Bee - (Bombus Hortorum)
Common Carder Bee - (Bombus (Thoracombus) pascuorum
Shield Bugs Mating - Palomina prasina
Darkling Beetle (Lagria hirta - I think)

* * *

With thanks, as ever, to iSpot for help with IDs.

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DO YOU KNOW?

We're into a new month but there are pictures I don't want to leave behind - pictures of things I like or find interesting but don't quite know what they are.

This beetle, for instance. I think I know roughly it's of the Geotrupes genus - but I'll never know its name exactly. I understand some beetles in this group can be better identified when upside down but even if I were to rummage around in the leaf litter of the New Forest (Hampshire) how would I ever recognise it again? After all, there's only one Alexander Beetle. (Isnt't there?)

This one is about half an inch long and since I don't know what to call it (assuming it isn't Alexander) I'll name it Beetle of the Waving Hands. (See the end of its antennae?)

Then there are.lichens. These were growing huddled against each other on a fallen branch (again in the New Forest). 

Lichen 1 Pale and Feathery.

(Late addition to text - iSpot ID - this lichen could be Evernia prunastri.)

Lichen 2 Pale and Lumpy-flakey.

I know where I saw them but nothing more. Do you know their names?

And back in Dorset; I put a picture of this lichen on iSpot and it was identified as Cladonia polydactyla. But how do I know it's not Cladonia digitata?

Because I don't know how to tell, I'm going to call it Lichen with the Bloody Fingers.

I've had even less luck in finding out what these fungi below are. Both are tiny.

I'll call this the Ice-topped Toadstool. (It isn't really ice; just looks like it.)

These are even tinier. (About 4mm across?) I wouldn't have seen them had I not sat down with a flask of coffee to admire the view. They were in the shadow of a hedge but facing a huge drop and dip in the landscape. (Hence the view.) So are they in shelter or exposed? It depends on which direction you are looking! But, short of the Latin one, I'm stumped for a name. Any ideas?

* * *

REMINDER

The May link box for Tree Following posts

will be on Wednesday.

(7th May)

It will open 7am UK time (I hope!)

and close 7pm UK time on Wednesday 14th.

(Also I hope. It works automatically but not necessarily precisely!)

Extra Links
Beetles of the Geotrupes genus - on the Bug Guide site.

Dung Beetle Page on the New Forest Explorers Guide site

Dor Beetle upside down on the Beetles Page on the 'Bugs and Weeds' site - a Nature Observer's Scrapbook
The poem about Alexander Beetle is from 'Now we are Six' by AA Milne. Here it is - unsung! (Called 'Forgiven' in the 'original'.)

Alan Silverside's Lichen Pages
Fungi Identification Guide - on the First Nature site.
Toadstools for Gardeners - On the RHS site
Beginners Guide to some of the Common Types of Fungi - in the Amanita Photo Library

The Loose and Leafy approach to naming plants and fungi - The New Linnaeus

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BLACK OIL BEETLE - (Meloe proscarabaeus)

Black Oil Beetle (Meloe proscarabaeus) exploring my leg.
Females are larger than males.

I was in a micro-village where there are primroses, sheep, a red telephone-box and a Church with what I took at the time to be a Saxon tower but which isn't. This is where The Grand Old Duke of York took his ten-thousand men to the top of a hill and marched them down again. What on earth were they doing? Keeping fit? Trying to get their bearings by spotting the sea in the distance?

As you can tell - this isn't a very academic blog. I expect I could easily find out but haven't lifted an internet finger in search of an answer. I wasn't there to study military history or research nursery rhymes, I was planning a stuck-foot post.

I thought this beetle would prefer to explore the grass
or a leaf but it took a lot of persuading before it would
get off my shoe.

A stuck-foot post is where you put your foot down and don't move till you've seen what you can see and photographed what you need for your blog. I invented the idea and set the rules for myself but I recommend you try it. It's wonderful what you can find if you give yourself the discipline of standing still. (You can twist and bend your body but you can't swivel.) 

It wasn't going well though. The light was all wrong. There was an interesting mound of moss but it was throwing off white glints so detail didn't show. There were some flowering dead nettles - which are pretty but dark and they weren't coming out well in photos either. There were some flat white stones embedded in the bank like bricks and . . . and . . . what was that . . . that black thing which moved?

The round dots which look like rivets in a heavy metal beetle
are the spiracles - through which it breathes.

This is the thing with a stuck foot post; first you realise there's always much more in any place than you might expect; and sometimes you discover (or re-discover because it can be a perpetual surprise) that when you're looking for one thing it may take a few moments before you notice others you didn't expect - and having once noticed them, they may turn out to be there in numbers and suddenly they are un-un-noticable. So - if hadn't rooted myself to that particular spot I might never have seen . . . seen . . . masses of Black Oil Beetles (Meloe proscrabaeus).

Mating?

That was the end of my stuck-foot post. Abandoning any attempt at standing still, I hurried along the bank. There were masses of the!. Now I'd tuned my eyes to them - they were everywhere! falling off blades of grass and stones (they kept falling off things) pottering into the road, mating, laying eggs (I think that's what they were doing) and generally living their beetley lives while not a car passed and I ran up and down being excited because, although they are not rare, I'd never seen them before - at least, not in these numbers.

Laying eggs? Or waiting for the right moment?

I may still know nothing about The Grand Old Duke of York - but did find out a little about the beetles. Having mated, each female digs burrows (maybe two or three) and lays eggs in them - up to a 1,000! When they hatch (generally a year later) they climb flowers and hang out with the pollen in wait for solitary, ground-nesting bees. ('Solitary bee' indicating the kind of bee which lives alone rather than one which is out on a mission by itself from its hive.) When one comes along (hopefully the right kind!) they climb onto its back and hitch a secret lift into the bee's burrow where turn into larva and eat the bee's eggs, pollen and nectar supplies. They pupate, turn into adult beetles, spend the winter in the bee's burrow and emerge in the spring to begin the cycle again - which is what they were doing when I came across them scurrying around in my stuck-foot post . . . and all along the bank below the hedgerow.

Although these beetles are densely black,
when the light falls on them in certain ways
they are of such a wonderful
blue its intense beauty is impossible to freeze.

There are five kinds of Oil Beetle remaining in the UK. Black Oil Beetle (which is what these are), Violet Oil Beetle, Rugged Oil Beetle, Short-necked Oil Beetle, Mediterranean Oil Beetle. Three others have become extinct and of the ones which remain Short-necked and Mediterranean Oil Beetles are at serious risk of becoming so. (I'm having trouble with the maths here - another source says three out of nine kinds of native oil beetle remain. This may be because small colonies of beetle are found from time to time so extinct/not extinct can be a bit nebulous. And it may be down to confusion between the different nations of the UK which sometimes confuse those of us who live here as much as they probably do outsiders!) 

What To Do If You See an Oil Beetle.

A moth for a bonus!
On the ceiling in my house.
March 30th 2014
Small Magpie Moth
(Eurrhypara hortulata)
Spring!

Run up and down and be excited of course. (But if one decides to climb your shoe and walk round your leg - stand still in awe!) (If one goes up your trouser leg - permission to feel a little less calm about things. A large brown cricket once boinged up mine and I unceremoniously panicked. I don't know why I panicked. Crickets aren't don't eat people. But I couldn't help it. Odd, we humans, don't you think?)

Then, if you are in the UK you could report your sighting to the Oil Beetle Survey on the Buglife Site. (You register first - see top right hand side of the report sightings page.)

If you are in Scotland - click here - you may come across the rare Short-necked Oil Beetle.

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The beetle photos were all taken on 26th March 2014

Buglife

Encyclopedia of Life - Worth Exploring

Encyclopedia of Life - Black Beetle Page

FOLLOWED TREES AND INCIDENTAL INSECTS

How's your tree following?

SWOLLEN-THIGHED BEETLE
(Oedemera (Oedemera) nobilis)

When I chose my clump of elderberry trees I decided to follow a particular leaf bud on one of them. 'This,' I thought 'will be interesting'.

At first, it was. But once the leaf had opened, it got stuck where it was. Everything else grew. I keep returning to the tree to photographing the non-growing leaf - but the results are hardly riveting. I've been back to take pictures of the flowers - then they were cut off by the council as it came by on its annual trim back. Most of the blossom was shaken off when they did it so there are spikes where the flowers were and very few berries.

Fortunately, there are others close nearby so I'll add what happens to them in my extended tree.

It's a cross over moment. Berries are forming but there are flowers still. They are neither as profuse nor as big as in other years (there have been seasons when the trees and bushes look as if they are spinning big, white plates) . . . and on them . . . here! above . . . A Swollen-thighed Beetle. And just look at its thighs too! I didn't name it. I'd have called it 'The Beetle With Massive Thighs' for it isn't ill. Its legs aren't swollen because it hasn't been taking enough exercise. This is its natural state. And isn't it beautiful? I think he's a he and his presence diverted me from my elderberry intentions.

Already we were coming to the end of National Insect Week and I had already taken a few pictures of insects that morning and the day before so I hurried home and . . . began to find out (with the help of iSpot) what they are.

On blackberry flowers (where the fruits are already forming)

Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

a Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

And sharing a (Spear?) thistle;

on the right, a Garden Bumble bee

(Bombus hortorum)








and, on the left, a Common Carder bee
(Bombus (Thoracombus) pascuorum)

Single roses in the hedgerow

are host to Shield Bugs mating
(Palomena prasina)

or waiting (?) in the sunshine, on hips already forming

a Lagria Hirta (which, I think, is also called a 'Darkling Beetle', beautiful name, no?).

As for the tree following? Can't let go of the Sycamore. Some of the ivy has been stripped from it or cut - but, here it is still, being magnificent!

I expect I should have posted this a week ago. Never mind - here's a Happy Insect Week; after all, insects are here every week.

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