the answer is....
with difficulty and very, very slowly.
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| He's not very well balanced... |
This is only the third time in my life I've ever seen them...
I thought that that was last year when I saw one...
but later identified it as the closely related Cassida sanguinolenta or one of many similar Cassida sp...
they are difficult to identify... but the most common is C. viridis... Susan, of Loire Valley Nature is a "professional splitter" [A Taxonomist]... I'm a "lumper"... I only need to get close to satisfy my brain...
The first time was...
"summer holidays, 1964... on bramble, on wasteland nr. Harrow & Wealdstone Station"...
the second...
can't remember year, plant or place...
mainly because it wasn't the first?
Or because I had so much trouble identifying it the first time...
I do remember the period tho'... late 1980s.
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| The head is up on this one that Pauline spotted, but the body is well clamped down... |
This, though is the first time I have got any colour pictures...
1964... no camera with me... I had a brand new Practica Nova IIb at that time...
and some extension tubes!!
I used to make small pencil sketches in a notebook...
long since lost in a move.
And any picture would have been B&W anyway...
I was into "home-bathroom darkroom" photography in the mid-60s...
and colour chemicals were way out of my pocket money range!!
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| Even a bucket of water didn't stop these two! [Actually, I'd just watered the mint when I spotted this pair!!] |
Late 80's... no camera with me... Pentax ME Super was my camera then...
left at home along with a neat macro device that I still use.
I used to go out on specific "photographic hunts"...
a roll of 36 slides was costly.
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| The way the lower beetle can clamp down is visible here... |
Full choice of equipment close to hand...
and, being digital, film was free!!
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| Dried off a bit!! |
I think that they are a particularly charming beetle....
when they move it is like the Bloody-nosed Beetle...
very deliberate, but surprisingly fast.
They clamp tight to the leaf and look a bit like a leaf gall...
which is what I thought I was drawing in '64...
until the "plant gall" stuck out an antenna...
These ones were "otherwise engaged", but the male[?] was firmly fixed to her[?] back....
I wondered if he has the same "furry feet" that Susan mentions with regard to the Lesser Bloody Nosed Beetle.
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| You can see a yellow fringe round the visible left foot |
