Insect favourites
“In researching our book (Identification Guide to Garden Insects of Britain and North-West Europe), Gail and I have had a great deal of fun getting to know about the lives of garden insects. Here are a few of my favourite bugs and their strange habits”, says Dominic Couzens.
Green Lacewing
This is one of those insects in which the adult is beautiful and the larva somewhat brutish. The adults fly on gossamer- light, cut- glass wings and have a nice habit of turning from green to brown in autumn. The larvae are voracious aphid- eaters; sometimes they place the body parts of former meals over their bodies for concealment, as they creep up on prey!
Common Green Capsid
There are bugs and bugs. The name ‘bug’ is often used as a collective term for all insects, but entomologists use ‘bug’ to refer to members of the group Hemiptera, which have mouthparts evolved into a syringe- like tube, or rostrum, which sucks up fluids. The male Common Green Capsid is an animal that seems to get just that little too over- amorous in the breeding season. It vibrates its abdomen in the presence of anything female – and that includes dead females, or even just bits of dead female. Awkward.
Dark- edged Bee-Fly
This is an absolute character in the garden, which soon became a firm favourite when I saw it the first time. It is basically a fluffy fly that looks like a minute hummingbird, with a long proboscis that looks like a beak, and an efficient humming action at flowerheads. In common with many a gentle- looking insect, it has a complicated life- history. Females lay their eggs in flight and flick them, with a twitch of the abdomen, into the burrows of solitary bees. The grubs hatch and feed first on the food provided for the bee grubs, and then on the young bees themselves.
Thick-legged Flower Beetle
This is an example of the jewel- like beauty of many garden insects – although this one is a true miniature, only 8-11mm long. With its ill- fitting jacket and strange swollen legs, the male is something of an oddity – nobody knows what the bulbous femur is for, but it looks like the result of hard work in the gym.
Wool- carder Bee
The male is super-aggressive and the female is an artisan. It’s the only British bee in which the male is larger than the female. The male defends a territory around its favourite flowers (often Lamb’s Ear) and is incredibly angry, attacking other intruding bees and insects – it can kill them with a charge, armed as it is with spines along its abdomen, and will also head- butt. Meanwhile, the female chews off the hairy surfaces of plants and uses the wool to line the cell walls of its nesting chambers.