It was a pretty dismal day, and though R hauled himself off out for a walk, I really couldn’t be bothered. Instead I made a vague attempt to catch up on some of the administrative backlog that’s still hanging over from half-term week, and then went bug bothering in the garden. Almost as soon as I started it began actually raining, and my total haul before I gave up and went back into the dry was three Opiliones, one Green Shieldbug, two Parent Bugs, and this Lesser Thorn-tipped Longhorn Beetle.
I love almost everything about these tiny beetles: their extravagant antennae, with their eyes wrapped bizarrely around the insertions; the patterning on their wing cases, made up of swirls of different coloured hair, and including the illusion that the elytra are stitched together by Frankenstein-type sutures; and the way they try to look unpalatable by having those adorable little points at the ends of their wing cases, and tiny “spikes” of bristly hair along the top of each case and on the sides of the pronotum. The one thing I don’t love – though I do understand, and sympathise – is the other way in which they endeavour to avoid being eaten on discovery, which is to impersonate a bird dropping by laying their antennae down the sides of the body and going completely still, for as long as it takes for you to go away and leave them alone.
If you hadn’t met one before, it would be extremely easy to overlook a 6mm beetle lying flat on its back on a beating tray, with is antennae and all its legs tucked in – but luckily I’m onto their little ruse by now. I gently rolled the beetle from the tray onto a fallen Norway maple leaf, and rested the leaf on my hand until the warmth livened it up, and it began to use its legs and spread its antennae. Then I photographed it as quickly as I could, before returning it to its shelter in the fronds of a cypress tree. R and I both favour a dark photo, but there’s a second, much brighter one above.
R: L2, C1, D3.
