Bugs galore!

It’s not until you spend 15 minutes really looking, listening and counting in a wildflower meadow that you realise just how many different creatures are living there. And when you give a seemingly empty bush a sharp tap and hold a white umbrella upside down underneath it, it’s surprising to find a whole community of invertebrates has dropped into the brolly!
These are just a couple of the field techniques which were demonstrated to us last Saturday by Steve Lings, during our Field Studies morning. We also learned a lot about the creatures we found - the differences between a beetle and a true bug, a spider and a harvestman and a grasshopper and a cricket; the history of wasps, bees and saw flies; what distinguishes a true fly; and how beautiful a seemingly ‘brown’ insect can look, when viewed under a magnifying glass.
We were unable to set any insect traps as we had planned, because of the very hot weather and consequent hard ground, but there was no real need. Numerous spiders, ladybirds, shieldbugs (at least 3 different species), hoverflies, wasps, bees, ants and butterflies were counted during the OPAL survey we completed, and each group found on average 48 invertebrates in just 15 minutes.

Eight species of butterfly and one species of day flying moth were spotted during the 15 minutes of the Big Butterfly Count in the afternoon. The Common Blue was the most numerous and seemed to be everywhere (I saw 17 in just 15 minutes), and it was good to see that quite a few Brown Argus were also on the field.

Steve Lings has found more than 800 different species of invertebrates on Halsey Field during the eighteen months he has been monitoring them, and he is sure there are many more to be found.
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