Face to face with a soldier beetle...

After dropping Alex off in Huntingdon, I finally headed down to Gamlingay Wood to do my woodland quadrats. It was a beautifully sunny morning, but very chilly. However, I resisted the temptation to don my fingerless gloves. It is the latter part of May after all!

Most of my time was spent staring hard at the vegetation, but I found a relatively warm sheltered glade and took a few minutes out to photograph one or two insects. There were two species of soldier-beetle basking on hazel leaves. By late May they should be everywhere but I've only seen one or two so far this year. This handsome fellow is Cantharis pellucida: the only good thing about the cold weather is that the insects are more approachable, though the continual breeze makes focussing challenging. This species is fairly common in woodland throughout most of Britain and predates smaller insects.

I finished at lunch time and then went to pick Alex up from Shuttleworth. He was supposed to work on his assignments in the afternoon, but he just crashed out on the bed, dead to the world. Some work got done in the evening, but deadlines are looming ever closer!!