Beetling about

Currently, we're away on holiday, but before we left Orkney for a trip to the east of England, there was an outing to Yesnaby on the west coast of West Mainland to look for some strikingly marked red and black beetles. This is a bit of an annual pilgrimage in April, but well worth scrabbling around on hands and knees to see some glossy black shinyness with bold red stripes.

No! Wrong type of Beetle

Yesnaby Castle

The foot of Yesnaby Castle

Before we found what we were looking for, I noticed a well-camouflaged micro-moth. The photo below shows the tip of my index finger for scale. Those that know about these sorts of things, identified the moth as Philedonides lunana.

Eventually, we began finding our target species, Chrysolina latecincta ssp intermedia, and Megan set about photographing them.

Meanwhile, I had found a slightly larger beetle, which was carrying off a small slug or snail. This time those who know identified it as Carabus arvensis.

 Pleasingly, during this trip, we also saw our first Arctic Skuas of the year.