Mark McCaughrean30s ago

A surprisingly warm December day, ~14ºC, has brought out a few intrepid garden insects.

On the other hand, it's very dark, with heavy cloud & light drizzle, highly sub-optimal for handheld macro photography 😬

So I've had to convert this picture to b/w to salvage anything – it's likely a common striped woodlouse (Philoscia muscorum).

Still, first insect picture for 3 weeks 🙂

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Paul Förster Nov 29

The nice brown marmorated stink bug is still alive after a week and still crawling around the same place. We called it Wörner. 🤣

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_marmorated_stink_bug

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Paul Förster Nov 21

A brown marmorated stink bug. I found this but crawling on a lamp yesterday. 🤣

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_marmorated_stink_bug

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Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 15

And finally for now, definitely another new species, although quite which exactly ... 😬

This small black fellow seems fairly likely to be a spiny-legged rove beetle of the Oxytelinae sub-family, but beyond that, it's hard.

iNaturalist prefers Anotylus rugosus, but also suggests the very similar Cophrophilus striatulus 🤨

Based on the pictures, I slightly favour the former 🤷‍♂️

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Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 15

Now speaking of gnats, I took this picture a few minutes before the Trichocera ones & initially thought it was the same species 🤨

But the distinctive abdomen shape of this one is quite different.

The best guess that iNaturalist can come up with is the Bolitophila genus, but I can't immediately narrow it down to any of the ~40 species found in the Palearctic 🤷‍♂️

Anyone?

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Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 15

While that gnat was a new species for me, this is not – it's a tiny globular springtail called Dicyrtomina ornata (Bunte Kugelspringe in 🇩🇪), that I first photographed a fortnight ago.

But this is a (slightly) better picture, showing the lovely metallic patterning more clearly 🙂👍

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Mark McCaughreanNov 15

Fairly gloomy today again, but at least there's not much wind. Still, the few insects I did see were quite active, making it difficult to get great pictures & even then, requiring lots of noise reduction.

This is likely a gnat or crane fly in the Trichocera genus, & by comparing with various pictures, my best guess would be T. annulata, the winter gnat (Wintermücken in 🇩🇪).

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Mark McCaughreanNov 14

Another new species in the garden today, this time a fruit fly from the Tephritidae family.

The colouration, shape of the abdomen, & particular pattern of the picture wings all strongly suggest that it's a male oxeye daisy fly (Tephritis neesii; Margariten-Bohrfliege in 🇩🇪), found across the Palearctic.

Apologies for the low November light levels & thus fairly heavy smoothing 🤷‍♂️

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Mark McCaughreanNov 14

Another new species from yesterday's bug hunt, a remarkably successful one despite the lateness in the year.

Despite first impressions, this is in fact a small fly which folds the ends of its wings & takes on the appearance of a small beetle.

It's called Camarota curvipennis (Krummflügelige Halmfliege in 🇩🇪), a species of grass fly found across most of the Palearctic.

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Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 13

Here's the oddity.

Near the adult banded rhopalid (S. punctatonervosus) in the previous picture, there were some nymphs.

The larger one's a decent match for pix of late-stage nymphs of that species, but the two smaller (younger?) ones have me stumped – the body colours are similar, but the seven white stripes on the head don't resemble any rhopalid nymph I can find.

Anyone?

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