I have lived in my house since 1989 and this summer has been the first time I have seen a species of day-flying moth Callimorpha dominula (in English known as Scarlet Tiger moth). Friends living locally and in a village 20km away have also seen this species of moth.


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With Covid-19 restrictions, my entomological fieldwork was restricted to a few days mostly in June when the restrictions were eased. Overall a very frustrating year so far - UK experienced the longest, warmest spring in living memory but C-19 restrictions prevented me getting out into the government forest areas I have been studying, even ( Read more... )

The small Herefordshire village of Moccas is home to an important UK National Nature Reserve - Moccas Deer Park. The Park is ancient in orgin and was landscaped during 1778 by Lancelot 'Capabilty' Brown. It is not known how long the fallow deer have been kept by the Moccas estate; they were almost certainly introduced to Britain by the Normans in ( Read more... )

In the part of England where I live - Herefordshire - the weather in late January was unseasonally mild. Often day time temperatures of +10 to +12C and no night frost ( Read more... )

During my holiday in September I visited Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset. This is type locality for the Kimmeridgian Stage of the Upper Jurassic, dated approximately 157 to 152 million years old and sandwiched between the Oxfordian Stage below and Tithonian stage above ( Read more... )

Two moth caterpillars from an oak tree. Their anatomy is modified to resemble the leafless twigs of the oak tree. Normally a butterfly or moth caterpillar has three pairs "true legs" at the front, four pairs "false legs" towards the rear end and one pair of 'claspers" at the very end. These two "stick caterpillar" have 3-1-1 as shown in second ( Read more... )

Since the first week of June I have been employed on a Government Conservation Agency project investigating the distribution and trees preferences (with the hope of finding out something about the life history and ecology) of a small (2.5mm) beetle Hypebaeus flavipes. In UK it lives only on a small number of ancient oak trees in Moccas Park ( Read more... )

Yes, I am an insect specialist, an entomologist, but this post is about one species of insect with very specialised life history. Meet Ephialtes manifestor (Linnaeus) - a "Sabre Wasp" (Order: Hymenoptera, Family: Ichneumonidae)


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When nursery rhymes were popular (i.e. before every household had at least one TV) "This is the House that Jack Built" was known to most families.

It uses "cumulative tale technique" by means of which the scenes mentioned all link together at the end. It is not a story about Jack building a house. With the metre and repetition and the ( Read more... )

There are several species of beetles that live in ant nests or are in some other association with ants. This spring I have been trying to find some of these beetles (it's OK, I am an entomologist, so for me this is a normal activity ( Read more... )