Conifer Bashing

I recently acquired another book for the shelf:

I was mainly intent on getting literature on the much smaller 'inconspicuous' ladybirds, but flicking through reminded me of a few of the larger 'conspicuous' species that I've not seen for many years. One in particular stood out, Striped Ladybird. I saw this way back on 15/08/2001, and at the time it was an interesting but not especially relevant bit of moth trapping by-catch. I'd not long started photographing moths, and it must have seemed at least nice enough to point the lens at ....

As it happens, it was just as well that I did bother as it turns out it was only the sixth record for VC55, and there has not been one since. It was attracted to a trap during a session at Martinshaw Wood, along with Eyed Ladybird - another I've not seen for a long while. The new book highlighted that both are coniferous specialists, along with a few other species, which makes sense why I've not seen them recently as this is not a habitat that I spend much time in and certainly haven't moth-trapped for a while.

I had a couple of hours spare on Saturday morning before heading off to the early LCFC kick off, and so I decided that I'd head over to Martinshaw Wood and bash some conifers in the hope of picking up a ladybird or two.

Martinshaw is a decent sized wood, bisected by the M1. It has large sections of conifer plantation but there is also a good area of mixed woodland. It would be good to get in there again for some proper mothing sometime. However as to the aim of the morning, I immediately realised that it was not really a good plan as the decent coniferous branches (ie pines) were well out of reach and the branches that were in reach were not the right type (eg cedar / cypress).

Still, I had a good bash and got some decent exercise. Whilst I drew a blank on the intended targets, I did manage to fill a few pots with a variety of stuff showing how valuable conifers can be as overwintering sites for all manner of inverts. I've got a few small spiders still to sort, and a couple of Tephritis sp. and a barkfly to try and photograph, but this fallen pine yielded the best surprise:

Box Bug

Box Bug first appeared in VC55 in 2014, and it's one I've been expecting to bump into before long as it spreads but finding one by bashing a fallen pine in winter was not what I had in mind. Amongst the spiders that I could identify was this nice one:

 Diaea dorsata

All in all a very nice couple of hours. I also got to see some bits of woodland there that I've not seen before, as I completely lost my bearings and headed energetically in the opposite direction of the car park ...