In a special short episode we talk about Stag Beetles and Lesser Stag Beetles. We discuss their life cycle, distribution, behaviour and how Neil determined if the males could bite or not! The links mentioned in the podcastPTES websiteStag beetle.infoStag beetles
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Popped over to West Canvey Marsh RSPB reserve yesterday in my lunch break to see the Lesser Yellow Legs, a bird I have never seen before. It was a distant view, and sadly the design at West Canvey means all birds on the far side of the lake there are and the birds on the…
The Lesser backswimmer Plea minutissima is often overlooked, being quite small (about 3mm long), resembling and often mistaken for a small nymph of the ‘greater’ backswimmer (Notonecta sp.). They are a real pain to photograph, rarely stopping long enough to find such a small creature in the frame, let a alone focus on them! I…
Just a quick post and photo. I’ll have to blog about these cracking little bugs one day, but for now here is a a pic of a lesser water boatman.
Had another go at the ‘Meet the Neighbours’ style photos i.e. with a white background. Got some I’m pretty happy with. Newt tadpoles Lesser water boatman. Colymbetes fucus Diving beetle.
Photographing more pond creatures today this lesser water boatman suffered from delusions of grandeur, sitting upside down at the surface like one of its larger relatives the greater water boatman . This algae eater is not going to kid anyone though, for as well as being smaller, it lacks that needle like mouth that the…
It was a cold winter December day today in Essex. Most the insect life is dormant for winter, but under the ice in the ponds there is still plenty of activity. A sweep with the net and a caught a number of creatures: damselfly larvae, water lice, water beetles and 2 species of backswimmer, the…
Some photos using my aquarium set up. One of the few species of the small dytiscid (diving) beetles you can identify without a microscope is Hyphydrus ovatus Unfortunately, like all small dytiscids, they don’t sit and pose for long, and it took my quite a while to get these photos of this 5mm long beetle.…
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the strange looking larva of the lesser diving beetle Acilius sp. (probably sulcatus) swimming around in a pond. I quick went and got a net and caught one, before taking it inside to photography in my aquarium set up. It is a fairly distinctive larvae with its…
Back in June I found a nicely coloured lesser water boatman nymph. I had never seen one with such colouration before. So I took photos from a number of angles in my photographic aquarium.