the things we find!

...the things I learn, discover, and photograph in pursuit of my daily blip never cease to amaze me.

After another drizzly and misty morning, the sun eventual made it through, albeit weakly, this afternoon. It had been a while since we looked for wildlife in the area of Durlston immediately around Anvil Point, so that is where we went.

Within minutes, I found a stunning ichneumon wasp but, when I went to photograph her, my camera wouldn't behave. In the moments that it took for me to realise that the lens wasn't seated properly (I must have caught the locking button) my subject had disappeared. I didn't see any other examples of the same species, but I did get images of several others.

While we were examining a patch of gorse and bramble, I noticed a small cricket like insect on a blade of grass. It clearly wasn't a cricket and, as it looked far more like a cockroach, that was what I checked on when we arrived back home. I didn't realise that we have three species of native cockroach in southern Britain. These are the Tawny Cockroach Ectobius pallidus, Dusky Cockroach Ectobius lapponicus, and this one, which is the Lesser Cockroach Ectobius panzeri. These native roaches are never pests, having a lifestyle far more akin to that of crickets. None of them are common. The lesser cockroach is usually found close to the coast on sand dunes, shingle beaches and chalk grassland. The one in my image is a female - males have full wings - and is about 7mm long. Cockroaches are in the same order as mantids.

We may well revisit the same area tomorrow...