I started looking at the prices for Nikon remote photography software and Camera Control Pro 2 is fairly expensive, costing around £130 if you buy it from Amazon. Other commercial software was also fairly pricey (NKRemote @ $130), so I looked around for something free.

After a little Googling I found DIYPhotobits.Com Camera Control. It’s completely free and does the job (while using a paltry 373KB of hard drive space)! The interface was so simple that I have already taken photos of two specimens and depth-stacked them (in CombineZP). This means I can now remotely control my camera and produce depth-stacked images using free software :)

Here is an example of Zopherosis georgei (Coleoptera: Zopheridae) that I took today:

A shot of one of the nearby chalk pits (mostly filled with Birch)

When I visited with Tristan I went to Grays Gorge and Lion Gorge. At Grays Gorge I saw my first wild British orchid, the common spotted orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii.

Common Spotted-orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii

We were fortunate to meet the site warden whilst we explored, and hopefully I will be able to acquire some old records for insects in the area.

Somewhat anecdotally, I recall seeing glow worms, Lampyris noctiluca, on the nearby cliffs when I was younger but do not recall seeing them after a road was built nearby, which would have coincided with increased light in the area from both new houses and street lights. Perhaps this can be seen from the local records…

Some photos from the gorge area:

A lucky shot

The rather attractive Cercopis vulnerata

Wicken Fen

The habitat of the reserve is a remnant of the formerly vast Cambridgeshire fenlands, land which is now used almost entirely (99.9%) for farming. The fen has long been a place of interest for entomologists, and continues to be so: as well as being species rich, the British Dragonfly Society will be opening a dragonfly center at the fen later in the year.

Even though I visited early in the year, the weather was nice and sunny, and I saw many insect species for the first time. On the start of our walk my girlfriend found a prowling water scorpion, Nepa cinerea, which was an exciting first Heteropteran bug of the year! This was also my first proper opportunity to use my new macro lens, and although I am still learning many basics, I was happy with most of the photos I took.

Water scoprion, Nepa cinerea

Some other firsts for me was seeing a slender groundhopper, Tetrix subulata, and a 24-spot ladybird, Subcoccinella 24-punctata. Whilst my girlfriend is (fortunately) fond of insects, she was particularly excited to see a common lizard, Zootoca vivipara, basking in the sun.

Common lizard, Zootoca vivipara

On the way back I saw many mining bees, Andrena clarkella, digging their burrows around an oak tree.

Mining bee, Adrena clarkella

I am hoping to visit Wicken Fen again soon, perhaps during my next holiday.

Melolontha melolontha, a British member of the Scarabaeidae family

In the Scarabaeidae subfamily Scarabaeinae the principal food stuff is dung, although some species eat carrion, rotting fruit or fungus. In a recently published paper one Peruvian species in the Scarabaeinae subfamily, Deltochilum valgum, has been found to be a predator of millipedes (Larsen et al, 2009).

In comparison to other dung beetles, D. valgum has a modified head, hind legs (the tibiae) and abdomen (pygidium), which makes it suited for attacking and feeding on millipedes. The beetle uses part of its head, the clypeus, as a lever to prise apart segments of a millipede’s body, often resulting in decapitation.

To test food preference the experimenters used a variety of bait traps containing dung, carrion, fungus, fruit and millipedes. They found that D. valgum was only attracted to millipedes and that it preferred millipedes which were injured but still alive.

Thanks to Linda for showing me a BBC News article on this. Irritatingly the BBC had inadequately referenced the study, so it took me a little while to find the actual article.

References:

Larsen, T.H., Lopera, A., Forsyth, A. and Génier, F. (2009) From coprophagy to predation: a dung beetle that kills millipedes. Biology Letters, 20th January [Online] Available at:

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/g17124g4q8733365/

[Accessed 21st January 2009]