[...] you can find fascinating wildlife anywhere, even the smallest garden. All you have to do is watch and wait, and something will come along.
I've just been sorting through some insect specimens accumulated last year (specimen case pictured, left). Most have come from environmental surveys, but there are a few picked up elsewhere, including several gardens. I'll take them up to the Horniman Museum later this week, where they'll use them in some of the hands-on displays and as education duplicates for visiting school children.
As I'm taking a quick peek at each one under the microscope I come across a tiny brown domed beetle; at just about a millimetre long it's little more than a speck with legs. Ordinarily I would not have time to try and identify beetles this size, but this one is prettily patterned with a double pale horseshoe mark, and is immediately distinctive. It is Clitostethus arcuatus, Britain's smallest, and perhaps rarest, ladybird.
Of course, not being of the large, spotted, variety, it is not really counted as a true ladybird, and is not included in any of the online ladybird surveys. But it is a closely related beetle, part of a rather neglected group of small to, in this case, tiny species in the same family - Coccinellidae. And although it is very tiny indeed, it has been used, like other ladybirds, as a biocontrol agent, against whitefly in California.
It may have something to do with its diminutive size, but this beetle is only very rarely found in Britain, so I'm pleased it turned up in a small domestic garden - my parents'. They live at the foot of the South Downs near Newhaven. It's a lovely spot, but it's not large, and is very typical of suburban gardens with its lawn, flowery borders and hedged boundaries. I'm fascinated that such a rare insect should turn up there, but not really surprised. It's actually one of a series of strange and peculiar things that have appeared over the years. It proves, once again, that you can find fascinating wildlife anywhere, even the smallest garden. All you have to do is watch and wait, and something will come along.
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