I've finally managed to crack a couple of hemipteran puzzlers that I've been
mulling over all week. Both were swept and potted at Ketton Quarry on Monday,
and both popped their clogs in respective pots before I could even attempt a
photo. Luckily there were both big enough that they were not going to shrivel
away to nothing in a couple of days. It's not often now that I find a bug and
can't resolve it having gone through the British Bugs galleries, but both of
these stubbornly refused to be identified until I had a lucky moment last
night and a eureka moment this evening.
First up, this dark Mirid with bright red cuneus, bright green underneath and
(although they fell off) longish 'Phytocoris like' hind legs. I could not pick
out anything similar in the British Bugs galleries, then last night whilst
flicking through Facebook I noticed a photo of the exact same bug on the UK
Hemiptera group. Here's a lazy photo of my dead hind-legless bug ....
It's a male Closterotomus trivialis, which currently isn't featured on
the British Bugs gallery. It was added to the British list as recently as
2008, when adults were found on a small number of cultivated Hypericum plants
in a north London garden. They still don't seem to have spread; the NBN atlas
maps is pretty devoid of dots - except there is one for Leics., a 2018 record
from a garden. It must be spreading, and whilst info seems a bit sparse I
wonder if the abundance of native Hypericum spp. at Ketton Quarry is relevant.
Needless to say, it's a new one for me.
The other bug that has been bugging me is this; a smallish, entirely all dark
and quite hairy thing ....
Earlier this evening I had one more trawl through British Bugs and realised
why I was missing it: this is a macropterous form of
Orthocephalus coriaceus, a widespread but local bug of grasslands. No
VC55 dots on the NBN maps, and no previous records as far as I can tell. And
again, new for me.
Great stuff. I seem to be quite lucky lately in that although I'm limiting the
number of specimens collected to check out quite a good percentage of them
have been new for me and significant for VC55.
Here's a few flower buds from the same visit to fill the page a bit ...
Yellow Bird's-nest
Deadly Nightshade
Hedge Woundwort
Bladder Campion
Common Spotted Orchid
And because I can, another Stenurella melanura - Ketton Quarry seems to
be a good site for this longhorn in VC55 .....
5 comments:
I was about to click on the Amazing Music tab, or whatever it was called, and...gone :( Anyway, amazing music!!! That's my YouTube channel sorted into the wee hours :)
Sweet.
Have you managed a post with the new Editor yet? I noticed last night that another problem I'd flagged seems to have been sorted.
I started one, but it was taking so damned long to do anything that I scrapped it and reverted to the old version. Maybe it/I was having a bad night. I'll try again and see what happens.
I can't post to new Blogger properly from Safari (on OS X), but Firefox works OK so a browser change may help. New Blogger is still rubbish though - doesn't help with that.
I just checked ORCA for your bugs Mark. There are two previous records for Closterotomus trivialis, both from Graham Calow's garden in Sapcote. Orthocephalus coriaceus is new to VC55.
Cheers Alan. Yes, Firefox works fine for Blogger (or at least it has for me for several years).
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