The Posing Coachman

Well, second week of lockdown, and I'm trying to keep active - I'm just not seeing very much.

The exception to this was coming across this mad beetle on the cycle path at work. It was gadding about with its bum in the air like a scorpion, a behaviour I've never come across in my admittedly limited experience of beetles.

It was clearly rather emotional about something though. Maybe it didn't like the slug that was crossing the cycle path at the same time?

A bit of research on google ("Which beetles stick their bum in the air?") revealed it to be a devil's coach horse beetle, a common species with a flexible abdomen that allows it to display like that. Common yes, but a new one to me.

Another interesting sighting was three skeins of about 300 pink footed geese flying over work - such a distinctive sight, cruising high in their shall v-echelons. The local kestrel is very busy hunting, and the juvenile buzzard would be too if he didn't get chased out of the sky all the time by the local carrion crows. 

Anyway, hopefully the rain stays away tomorrow, I want to go for a bike ride.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 14.11.20

 

Greedy Sluggies are at it Again

This time, they've been finding algae to graze off on the library windows.

Must be wonderful to find all that food and be able to just slither around slowly and eat; however I bet they have to worry about birds who might fancy a big fat slug.

These patterns are like expressions of chaos theory.

Si

Slug Tracks on the Bottle Bank

I've been suffering from a total lethargy today, seemingly unable to do anything after waking at 9 other than just lying around in a daze in various places. Must be Christmas digestion catching up with me or something; I've felt as weak as a kitten all day.

So, a wasted day, or so you would think. Well, perhaps not. On delivering my empties to the bottle bank, I noticed an astonishing series of patterns in the dirt on the otherwise unappealing big metal bunkers.

I can only assume that these are the trails left by slugs making their way over the bottle banks for god knows whatever reason. I think they are incredible, to me seeming to show the grips in the undersurface of the invertebrate that they use for grip and propulsion.

I might of course be completely wrong and it is some other kind of natural phenomenon. But I'd guess at slugs.

Or maybe snails. Maybe.

In any event, wasn't expecting to find such beauty on a bottle bank.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 30.12.16

The Suicidal Slug

Was having a sneaky pint the other night, when I noticed this fellow making his way across the slightly stereotypical beer barrel table in order to have a bit of a feast.

Now I'm no gardener, but I'd always assumed that slugs and salt don't really go together; indeed, sprinkle salt on a slug, and a rather nasty sounding process called "exosmosis" causes water to be leached out of the unsuspecting invertebrate and cause it to die a rather painful death.

So why this specimen was carrying out the slimily-trailed version of a trip to Dignitas by getting stuck into some salted peanuts. What was it up to? Life in a pub beer garden gotten too much for it? Lost all its life savings to a fake African slug Prince? Made redundant from the local lettuce eating business?

We shall never know.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 22.07.15