Richard Jones

A moth even I can recognize — Timandra comae the blood vein, desperately trying to align itself with the bathroom tiles.

Dozens of these handsome groundbugs in London today, Rhyarochromus vulgaris. Now widespread in south-east England after originally turning up in London about 15 years ago.

Surprising find of the day in central London Alydus calcaratus. Usually sandy heaths, chalk downs or brownfield sites.

Such a handsome hoverfly. Chrysotoxum festivum. So bright and crisp and graphic.

Fave bug of the day, Cicadella viridis, widespread in marshy meadows but such a lovely colour.

Lagria hirta, Tenebrionidae, not rare but I see much less of it now I don’t live on the South Downs. Purfleet this afternoon.

I’d say that Tritomegas sexmaculatus was now very well established in Purfleet. Very well established indeed.

Fave bug of the day so far — Brachinus crepitans, common bombardier beetle. Not common though. Named for the audible pop it makes exploding hot hydroquinones from its crucible-lined rear end. Purfleet. Essex.

Two words of the day in one. Chislep (though he also spelled it cheeselip and cheslip) a woodlouse, and whitloaf, a corruption of whitlow finger, a painful swollen and blistered fingertip caused by herpes virus. Moufet, Theater of insects, English edn, 1658. You’re welcome.

@digitalmedievalist.bsky.social ever come across woodlice? Or anything even vaguely woodlousey. They’re so common and familiar I can’t believe they dipped completely out of view between Pliny and Moufet.

@medievalists.bsky.social ever come across woodlice? Or anything even vaguely woodlousey. They’re so common and familiar I can’t believe they dipped completely out of view between Pliny and Moufet.

Yes, you can find Moufet’s Theatre of insects (1634) online, but here I can handle and flick through the copy, bought in 1780 for £1 by James Smith, founder of the Linnean Society, which has contemporaneous hand colouring of a few of the butterfly pictures.

Insectology, not a ghastly modern invention — this from the English edition of Gmelin’s expanded version of Linnaeus’s System of Natural History, 1794-1810. We will let this pass, but we will never mention it again. Is that understood?

Variimorda villosa is not something I see very often. One of the skipping flower beetles, which visit flowers, and yes they skip to flick themselves away out of danger. Maidstone.

Argiope bruennichi, wasp spider, an immature female not quite yellow enough to live up to her common name nor swollen with eggs as I normally find her. Maidstone.

Brown Argus, Aricia agestis, which I’m now seeing all over the place. Maidstone.

Bembecia ichneumoniformis, six-belted clearwing, which I only noticed because I thought it was an interesting looking wasp. Maidstone.

Apparently these pillows put out in the library of the ⁦‪Linnean Society aren’t for delicate old tired readers to put their heads down for a quiet nap. They’re to support the delicate old books I’ve been reading.

Are you trying to put worms into people’s mouths?

Too late.

Flying ant day in East Dulwich and as well as the huge queens, small males are also needed. Sometimes called drones but that’s really just honeybees. They don’t shed their wings to run around on the ground after mating. They just die whole after a few brief hours. Job done.

There’s an exhibition of field notebooks in the Linnean Society library, extolling the virtues of patient observation and careful record-keeping. I use illegible scrawl in mine. Should I be ashamed? Or should I start carrying a fountain pen and water colouring kit?

Tools of the trade. From Latreille’s volume 1 of Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle (1802-5). Little different from today. I once made a version of 7 using an old pair of scissors, wire coat hanger, solder, furniture webbing, net curtain. More trouble than it was worth to be honest.

I’m slightly disappointed that googling “spider egg sac that looks like a flying saucer” comes up blank. One of the ground spiders, Gnaphosidae I think. Probably Trachyzelotes pedestris which occurs on the site. Leyton yesterday.

Bee ‘hotel’ in deepest industrial urban brownfield Leyton. Over half of the 8-mm holes seem fully occupied by leaf-cutters. And here’s a female taking a well earned rest from her labours.

Fave bug of the day. So far. Syromastus rhombeus rhombic leatherbug. Leyton, industrial urban brownfield site of course.

Muntjac deer droppings (?) Leyton, urban brownfield site.

Things forgotten for a long time until today. Long branch attraction. When phylogenic analysis wrongly favours fast evolutionary descent as reflecting close relatedness.

Word of the day — meiofauna: animals 0.1-1.0mm. I occasionally visit this microscopic realm; to look at some of the smallest beetles in the family Ptiliidae. And a challenge: is this the shortest word in the English language to contain all five vowels?

The view from my office today claims I have arrived.