The Lyons Share

At the start of our adventure, we went to see Bill Urwin at Shapwick Heath. Now Bill was very kind and sacrificed some of his bacon lardons as bate for the bottle traps he put out. I've never seen these in action and boy are they good at catching large water beetles! I've always been frustrated at never having seen any other Dytiscus other than Dytiscus marginalis so I was pleased to see our biggest Dytiscus, Dytiscus dimidiatus (above). How many more times can I fit Dytiscus in this Dytiscus themed paragraph?! None.

This is Hydaticus transversalis, quite showy for a water beetle. Bright colours and patterns are not much use in a ditch, so water beetles are mostly a drab lot. Not this beast though, what a looker!

The Lesser Silver Water Beetle Hydrochara caraboides wasn't in the bottles, this was netted in an area of Floating Sweet-grass. Three new beetles for me!

It was a cracking few hours and the bottle are definitely something I'll have a go at in the future. A big thanks to Bill and NE for their time. Whenever you're down this way Bill, I'll take you out for the day in Sussex! So there concludes (in reverse order) the posts about our little adventure. Or does it? Next time, the exciting prequel of our trip (it's not that exciting). I'm dragging this out like Peter Jackson's Hobbit!