ANOTHER GOOD NIGHT for moths but a busy day for me so these sketches are as far as I got with identifying some of the catch.
The most striking insect this morning was this black beetle which was well over an inch long but seemed bigger. I’d love to have time to draw these creatures but I knew that I’d have to be quick to get even this snapshot because I’d seen one just like it in the trap first thing yesterday morning and by the time I’d had breakfast and come out to sort through the catch it had disappeared. Presumably it had managed to clamber out through the narrow opening.
A slightly better record of another beetle that had blundered into the trap yesterday but which was still there when I emptied the trap because it still had last night’s takeaway with it; a fragment of earthworm. As the trap is boxed in, I assume that it had been flying with it. This is a – I guess – a rose chafer or a close relative of it.
It would normally keep its wings neatly folded beneath its elytra (wing-cases, that are modified forewings). In the rose chafer these have a coppery red sheen when seen from certain angles.