Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Monday 20 August 2012

Retro Rockpooling + More Bugs

I bought some books at the Birdfair on Friday: the new macro moth guide by Sean Clancy, the Collins Fungi guide, the Beetles Checklist by Duff and one of the very generalised Collins guides - this one:


I know that these generalised guides are sometimes a bit limited and are often berated by proper naturalists, but after thumbing through a few times this is my new current favourite book (ie the one I tend to pick up and idly flick through at some point during the day rather than having a need to check something). The photos throughout are brilliant, and it does exactly what I wanted - highlights the commonest coastal wildlife across many different groups. I decided to check out a few photos from previous visits to the beach and suchlike, and managed to quickly identify four new species including these two grainy blown-up extracts from other shots:

Montagu's Stellate Barnacle

Snakelocks Anemone

Looking forward to visting beaches and rockpools sometime soon.

Meanwhile, more bugs. The first two are from a quick walk down the lane yesterday afternoon, the latter two are from the garden MV last night.

Common Froghopper - very variable

Dock Bug - early instar nymph

Allygus modestus - makes the pair for the garden.
Note the dark black line on the vertex (like a pencil moustache).

Field Damsel Bug - on natural eggbox habitat

Also lots of these flies around at the moment ...

Eriothrix rufomaculata

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