Bogey beetle

by Graeme Lyons

Senior Ecologist

'bogey'

1.) a piece of nasal mucus

2.) in natural history: a relatively common species you really should have seen by now but through incompetence, indolence and/or bad luck, you ain't.

I've never seen an otter for example. Anyway, I digress...

Today, I finished my invertebrate surveys for the year wrapping up a survey of Iping and Stedham Commons. The very first suction sample produced this luminous little apple-green tortoise beetle. It's a real goody too, being a first for West Sussex. It's Cassida hemisphaerica, one I've always wanted to see. Not quite a bogey beetle in that sense, but it does look like something that fell out of your nose!

It's a nationally scarce species and I'm pretty sure a new one for the Sussex Wildlife Trust reserve network being only the third Sussex record! Odd that it feeds on campions, not a great deal of those on the heath. I love that suction sampler. It's a lot smaller than I had realised, and quite bright, with almost iridescent gold twinkly bits on it. The beetle that is, not my suction sampler.