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After two visits to the Rainham Marshes this year, I wanted to explore other local sites in Essex. The Chafford Gorges (owned by the Essex Wildlife Trust) are local to me and seemed interesting because of their flora and history. They are located in the the Chafford Hundred area which is mostly a modern housing development, and is adjacent to one of our huge regional shopping centres, Lakeside. The three gorges are all that remain of a much larger wild area that I remember from my childhood.

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

I have been meaning to try and make a focus stacked image after being inspired by some of Lord V’s photos and his various photo stacking guides for the freely available CombineZ programs, made by Alan Hadley.

A focus stacked image is a composite image with a better depth of field, made by combining images taken at different focal distances.

Orellana nigriplaga (depth stacked image)

This image is the result of combining the images below.

Preparatory images for depth stacking

I would recommend trying CombineZP, especially if you work with something like pinned specimens. I will be posting some more depth stacked images soon and might experiment with some landscape images.

This specimen is part of The Natural History Museum collection and was taken for a research request. © The Natural History Museum

I took my first spring insect photos today after seeing a queen bumblebee flying around the garden. There were quite a few hoppers about, one of which I photographed:

Stenocranus minutus (Hemiptera: Delphacidae)

I’m hoping to go out and catch one because I can’t quite get enough detail in a photo, but I will be getting a new (macro) lens which should help when taking photos of small insects! I had a look on the British Bugs site but didn’t see anything which had the black mark on the wing (until Joe identified it for me on Flickr!).

Tonight’s episode of QI (now in the “F” series) had a flora and fauna theme, of which one of the topics was flea circuses. I had always thought that flea circuses were mechanical and did not use fleas, but Stephen Fry has dispelled me of my ignorance! It seems that this is a common misconception and that flea circuses did use live fleas, although there were some mechanical “flea circuses” too.

Part of the work I do at the Natural History Museum involves the preparation for construction of taxonomic database on Coreidae, a family of ‘true bugs’ (Hemiptera) known colloquially as squash bugs or leaf-footed bugs. One aim of the database is to include photographs of as many important museum (type) specimens as possible, allowing researchers to view the specimens without having to travel to the museum or request to have the specimens sent through the post.

The Swedish Natural History Museum, Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, holds a number of these type specimens. As I was already going to be in Stockholm, my supervisor and I thought it would be good to visit the museum.

The entrance to the Swedish Natural History Museum, Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet.

The curators in the entomology department were very welcoming and helpful, answering many questions and allowing me to study some of their Hemiptera. Hopefully I will get to visit for longer this summer and photograph more of their specimens.

One of the photographed Coreidae, Bostrostethus annulipes © Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet

Today my supervisor showed me some photographs of male leafhoppers (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) feeding on river mud, a behaviour not previously recorded.

It got us thinking and we talked about unusual feeding amongst the Hemiptera in general, including some observations I made last year and a those featured in a summary paper about the Heteroptera.

Consumption of faeces (coprophily) and carrion (necrophily) has previously been observed in 35 Heteropteran species in eight families, the majority of which were seen in the Coreidae, six species, and Alydidae, four species (Jérôme, 2007). This behaviour has been mostly (95% of the time) recorded in male insects.

During July and August 2008 I saw Pentatoma rufipes (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) & Coreus marginatus (Hemiptera: Coreidae) feeding on fresh (wet) bird droppings. At the time I presumed this was well-recorded behaviour, made a note of it, and carried on with my field work. Whilst I wont presume observations of those two species have never been published, the summary paper by Jérôme doesn’t mention those two species.

Coreus marginatus on bramble

Whilst there are some theories about why these bugs engage in this unusual behaviour, I intend to do some information hunting and find out more. I’ve been told that butterflies feed on faeces or mud, so that seems a good place to start looking.

Jérôme, C. (2007) Note on coprophily and necrophily in the Hemiptera Heteroptera. Entomologie, 77: 107-112.

Dolycoris baccarum (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) belongs to one of my favourite insect families, the shield bugs. I have fond memories of seeing shield bugs as a child and they make me think of summer. I hope to see all of the British Pentatomidae and have been planning my some of my summer trips to fill the gaps.

Dolycoris baccarum (adult)

I find D. baccarum particularly attractive because of the pattern on its antennae and connexivum (the part with black markings either side of the abdomen). Another notable feature of D. baccarum is that it’s covered in fine hairs. If you look hard in the photo above you can see them.

The adults overwinter and become active in late Spring, laying their eggs around June. It often feeds on Prunus spinosa (blackthorn/sloe) from which it gets one of its vernacular names, the sloe bug, but will feed on other plants.

For more information, photographs and an illustrated stages chart, go to the British Bugs page. I got some information from the photographic shieldbug guide by Martin Evans and Roger Edmondson which I recommend and is referenced below.

Reference:

Evans, M. & Edmondson, R. (2005) A Photographic Guide to the Shieldbugs and Squashbugs of the British Isles. WGUK.