The Lyons Share

We were not going to do any natural history on the last morning but the weather was too good so we had a couple of hours on the peninsula shown below. I REALLY wanted to see the above bug having been told it was common on umbellifers across the island. So with an hour to spare, Chris spotted one on some Hogweed. It's the Minstrel Bug Graphosoma lineatum which was a great way to end and probably would have been the highlight of the trip if it wasn't for what had happened a few minutes earlier as we got to the car park...

I saw what I assumed was a longhorn beetle flying along a line of bramble, I positioned myself on the path where I thought I might intercept it and had one chance, I got it. But it wasn't a longhorn beetle, in fact, it wasn't a longhorn beetle at all! It was a Fiery Clearwing! For those that don't know, this is a wasp mimic moth that is extremely rare in the UK. It did not hang about for a photo so the only shots I got were through the glass.

But that wasn't it. We also picked up a Tawny Longhorn Parocorymbia fulva.