Peter Piper

It's official: alliteration is good for the brain! Information thanks to Newindpress - Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

Small Stones (& Poetry Pebbles)

Fiona Robyn is collecting 'small stones'. Take a look and see if you can 'find' any.

Children in Alexandria, Louisiana at the Tree House Children's Museum are being asked to make 'poetry pebbles' ...

Official ID: a burying beetle

I am very grateful to representatives of Wicken Fen and Buglife (The Invertebrate Conservation Trust) who have helped me to find out about this beetle. Sadly, perhaps, it is not the rare Crucifix Ground Beetle. It seems instead to be the Necrophorus vespilloides, a member of the Silphidae family or burying beetle.

Matt Shadlow of Buglife replied to me with the following message:

Dear Caroline

Unfortunately this is not a Crucifix beetle (Panagaeus cruxmajor).
There is a certain resemblance, but the photo is a much bigger species,
a type of burying beetle. While the Crucifix beetle (Panagaeus
cruxmajor) and its close relative Panagaeus bipustulatus (which is
commoner but still very rarely encountered) are predators of small
insects or snails, the beetle you have seen is associated with dead
animals, most commonly mice. A male and female burying beetle will meet
up at a carcass and form a bond, they then defend the mouse from rivals
as they dig out the soil form underneath the animal so that it sinks
underground. At the same time the beetles allies the little mites that
they carry around jump off and eat any fly eggs that have been laid on
the body. Once it is underground the beetles create a chamber on top of
the mouse and the female lays her eggs. When the larvae hatch out they
sit in a 'nest' and beg for food. The male and female beetles help
their young by partially digesting the mouse and feeding it to their
offspring. Eventually the larvae pupate and the parents leave.
These are four species of burying beetle (Nicrophorus spp.) with colour
patterns like this and we would need to see the colour of the antennae
and the shape of the legs to know which it is.

You are not the first person to get excited by potentially finding the
Crucifix beetle.

I hope this is useful, if you would like to support our work conserving
populations of endangered invertebrates please go to
http://www.buglife.org.uk/joinus/

Cheers
Matt Shardlow

Director
Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust
170A Park Road
Peterborough PE1 2UF

01733 201210
079 21 700151

www.buglife.org.uk
Conserving the small things that run the world.

Matt thought I would be interested to hear about Darwin's encounter with a TRUE Crucifix Ground Beetle in 1846. You can read the 'unsavoury' account in Letter 109 on the Darwin Correspondence Project site.

STOP PRESS: a message from Sean McHugh, Communications Officer of Wales Biodiversity Partnership (published here with his permission):

Caroline

Thank you for your recent email. I submitted the details to two experts
and here is their conclusion:

'I believe it is a sexton beetle, Nicrophorus humator, similar markings
to the Crucifix ground beetle Panagaeus crux-major, but the latter is a
saltmarsh/fen specialist, only known in Wales from either side of the
Burry Inlet, and not recorded on the Gower side since 1912'.

'Sexton Beetle. Although the elytra markings are similar there is also a
white stripe on the thorax (the thorax is also a different shape) and
there's a dead mouse there'.

A key observation is the dead mouse; Nicrophorus humator lays eggs
beside corpses of small mammals and birds which she buries.

However, it's a great field observation & we need more insect
observations to be reported. Take a look at the Local record Centre
sites, for the Swansea area it is covered by Sewbrec
(http://www.sewbrec.org.uk/) where you can submit online records and
find out more about recording & training. Also, take a look at our
website (www.biodiversitywales.org.uk) to see how you can become
involved in Welsh Wildlife.

Regards

Sean

Sean McHugh
WBP Communications Officer
Wales Biodiversity Partnership
c/o Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales, Fountain Road, Tondu, Bridgend, CF32 0EH
E-bost/e-mail: s.mchugh@welshwildlife.org


So the picture has changed, and I can no longer say that I discovered a Crucifix Ground Beetle, but at least I now know more about it. Incidentally, I thought the name 'burying beetle' rang a bell from somewhere. Those who know me will be familiar with my passion for 'things Cornish'. It suddenly dawned on me that there is a delightful book, set in St Ives, called 'The Burying Beetle'. My posting has come full circle - and has rotated around to literature once more!

Burying Beetle sites:

• Dr Sheena Cotter at the University of Cambridge
  
• 'The Burying Beeetle' by Ann Kelley, Luath Press Limited

Postscript: on the subject of burying creatures, I have just read the earthworm poem as part of the project on 'animal mask poems' at the Wild Rose Reader blog ...

from the field book

Right: Chough in Pembrokeshire (taken with a zoom lens).
Copyright Caroline Gill 2008

How many of you enjoy poems about birds? For some of us, our acquaintance with birds in poetry began with Edward Lear's splendid, if distinctly unconventional, owl in the pea-green boat. More recently I have fallen in love with some of the poems by Edward Thomas: his owl poem is particularly poignant.

If like me, you enjoy the flutter of feathers as you turn the pages of a poetry volume, I would thoroughly recommend from the field book by Carol Thistlethwaite. The author speaks with authority when she writes about the 'slender hips' of the water rail and the 'straw-bent legs' of the avocet, for Carol has worked as a field teacher for the RSPB at the Ribble Discovery Centre.

from the field book is crammed, end to end, with the jizz on birds. Meadow pipits are to be found alongside the red-legged partridge, and pied wagtails perch opposite the wren. There are occasional illustrations: I particularly like the Common Tern, with its simplicity of line. This bird pops up again on the cover, but you will need to look carefully to spot it!

snipe is a concrete poem: it literally covers the page. black-headed gulls, another concrete poem, is playful in tone. Poems of all shapes and sizes flit across the pages and somehow manage to fit between the covers of this delightful volume.

The final poems encompass the theme of darkness: we encounter the striking image in Barn Owl of the 'phantom with the weight of life hooked in its claws'. This creature could hardly bear less resemblance to his benign cousin, the 'elegant fowl', who sang to his 'small guitar'!

If you would like to experience the jizz for yourself, you might like to buy the book!

• from the field book blog
  

• from the field book (for sale at BeWrite Books)
  

• WorldCat

On the nature of poetry ... and poetry huts (& sheds)

Definitions of poetry intrigue me. As soon as poetry is pinned down, it has a habit of slithering its way out of its straitjacket, or so it seems to me. I have decided that it would be revealing to blog links to articles that include some of these definitions. So here goes:

Poetry and the Possible by John J. Ronan, Poet Laureate, Gloucester, Massachusetts. From Wicked Local Gloucester, Mon 28 July 2008. The letter includes quotations from:

1. Edward Arlington Robinson
2. Carl Sandberg
3. Mark Twain

P.S.

• I rather like Scott Naugle's poetry definition (or observation) in The Sun Herald.
• I also like the Reverend Gideon Cecil's description in his letter about Martin Carter, National Poet of Guyana: 'One of the delights of Carter’s poetry is its rendering of profound philosophical thoughts locked in magnificent imagery.' From Letter to the Editor in the Stabrook News. Tues 5 Aug 2008.
• There are some good 'poetry definition' nuggets in this piece of advice for poets in Africa from Anis Haffar. The writer refers to Albert Camus, the Nobel laureate, reminding us that we are “obliged to understand rather than to judge”.
• Does poetry matter?
  

P.P.S. We often thinks of monks scribbling away in hermit cells, but poets like reclusive places, too. Here are some fascinating writing places ...

• The Travelling Poetry Hut, featured in CBS 3 Springfield News.
• Parson RS Hawker's cliff top 'driftwood writing hut' at Morwenstow, Cornwall, UK. Property of the National Trust.
  
• The writing shed at Laugharne in Wales, UK, where Dylan Thomas wrote his poetry. The original doors are in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea.
  

Animated Poetry

I read an article by Nigel Kendall in the Times Online, and went to the link at the end of it. See what you make of Ana Marie Uribe's 'anipoems' (aka animated poems) ...

What would the Reverend R.S. Hawker have made of these mermaids?

A Crucifix Ground Beetle?

Photograph: Copyright David Gill 2008
(click photo to enlarge)

My husband, David, and I were out walking along a footpath in a wood near the Swansea Valley in South Wales, UK on a sunny Saturday afternoon, 26 August 2008 at about 4pm, when we came across this beetle. The beetle was 2-3 metres from the river bank, and was moving about among the dead leaves at the base of a tree. There were very small black insects scuttling about in the vicinity (and the photograph seems to show a dead mouse, which we had not noticed).

I would love to identify the beetle, and would be grateful for any expert assistance here: do drop me a post on the blog if you can help with the identification. When and where, I wonder, was the most recent sighting in Wales?

I looked on Google Images, and began to wonder whether it could be a Crucifix Ground Beetle. I gather that these have been found at Pembrey, South Wales, in the past; but that they are rare. I also looked on the excellent ARKive site.

See also:

• The Times Online: May 17, 2008. Crucifix ground beetle spotted after 50 years (Wicken Fen)
  
• The Wood Mouse's Diary
• The Darwin Correspondence Project
• National Trust report (Wicken Fen sighting)
• ditto (NT2)
  
• UK Biodiversity Action Plan (for CGB)
  
• United Press International
  
• Dear Kitty: Some Blog
• Natural History Museum Nature Navigator
• Google images of the CGB
  

(I apologise if this post has changed very slightly: I lost my original text while I was posting comments!).

For wildlife in Wales, see Wales Biodiversdity Partrnership.
For insects, see BugLife.
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Jul 27 (2 days ago)

Wood Mouse has left a new comment on your post "A Crucifix Ground Beetle?":

Hi while I am not an expert, that sure does look like one to me. Also add to the visual record, your description of the habitat sounds right too. Not that there is that much known about the beetle, no one knows what its habitat requirements are but these are the same conditions that the National Trust Entomologist found for the population in Wicken Fen and are the same conditions here in Chopwell Wood.

It is likely that there are other populations out there, they dont think they are lost as they know where they are, its the Entomologists that have lost them.

Well personally I think its fantastic news and well done you for taking the time to look it up.

Mouse
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National Biodiversity Network Gateway website feedback (2 hours ago)

Hi,

Thank you for your sighting and the accompanying information. I have
forwarded it to one of my colleagues who happens to be a beetle specialist.
We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Regards,
Mandy

Sent: 26 July 2008 23:16
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Hi Caroline,
I've posted the link on Chorley & District Natural History Society's web
page. So hopefully they'll ID the beetle. Mistlethrush (from the field book).
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