Exploring the undergrowth

I spent a couple of hours last week, on a warm, humid afternoon, exploring the undergrowth at Deepdale Nature Reserve in Barnard Castle. The boggy ground on either side of the footpath was overgrown with butterburr leaves, meadowsweet, vetches, red campion and docks and was seething with insects and spiders.  These are a few that I managed to capture on camera. 

Earwig  - for more about earwigs click here

Female scorpionfly

Male scorpionfly - for more about scorpionflies click here

The beautifully iridescent green dock leaf beetle  - for more about this species click here

A sawfly that I haven't managed to ID for sure yet - for more sawflies click here 

A spider, Tetragnatha extensa, with a golden abdomen. For more spiders click here.

A very bug-eyed mayfly - possibly Ephemera danica. For more on mayflies click here.

A common green capsid bug Lygocoris pabulinus - for more on capsid bugs click here

A staphylinid beetle stretching its wings....

..... curling up its tail in characteristic defensive mode ....

..... and with its wings packed away, showing the extremely short wing cases. For more staphylinid beetles click here

Mirid bugs...

These little mirid bugs are extremely common on plants during the summer - especially on umbellifers - and there are numerous species. Fortunately the excellent British Bugs web site provides an excellent photographic guide that covers many of them.

This species is the very common Grypocoris stysi, which is often found on umbellifer flower heads, like the hogweed below.

I think this little green species, which turns up on many plants in our garden, is possibly the common green capsid Lygocoris pabulinus, but there are several rather similar small green capsid bugs so I could be wrong.

You can see the typical capsid proboscis here, which can penetrate plant tissues, the bodies of small insects and even human skin in some of the larger bug species, like water boatmen.

I thought this species, which took up residence on the dill plants in our garden, would be easy to identify because of that yellow chevron marking - but there are several similar species that are described as 'very variable' in their markings, so Liocoris tripustulatus is not much more than a guess at an identification.

You can find a picture of a more colourful species by clicking here.