A big rare weevil


I was poking around a clump of Hogweed, close to home this morning, when I came across a weevil that stopped me in my tracks. I know very little about weevils, but this one was striking, being large, exhibiting an elongated cigar-shaped body and was a bright orange-brown colour. It was so obvious that I assumed that I would find it illustrated in one of the generalist insect guides back at home. I was wrong.

I then went online. I checked all that I could, including Mark Gurney's fine photographic references, and felt confident enough to assign it to the genus Lixus - but as to species, I could not decide. It seemed to me on what little literature I could find that the five species of Lixus on the British list were all either exceedingly rare or very local. I needed help.

I put out a tweet, together with a couple of poor images that I'd grabbed with my phone, and was delighted to have responses from Billy Dykes and Mark Gurney, confirming the identification as Lixus iridis, a species that has a central western-European range, with a few records extending further east and into Iberia. And as for its British status? Rediscovered this May after last being recorded in the 1830s! And where was it rediscovered? Exactly where I'd found my insect this morning!

After finding all of that out I returned this afternoon to try and obtain some better images. Within 30 minutes I had located four individuals. Being so close to home I will make the effort to see if this weevil starts to spread away from this patch of Hogweed and, Hogweed clump by Hogweed clump, slowly colonise SE England.


Comments

Chris Janman said…
Well done Steve, i bet you were chuffed.
16 June 2020 at 19:23
Gibster said…
What a beast, I suspect it would have stopped me in my tracks too! Excellent find, but where else is it in the borough?
16 June 2020 at 22:56
Steve Gale said…
Thanks chaps. This is a bit like a non-birder photographing a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater in their local park and then posting it on Twitter for an identification!
17 June 2020 at 07:35
Tristan Bantock said…
It seems likely to be well established in the Banstead area - Sarah Barnes and I also found it at nearby Queen Mary's Park.
17 June 2020 at 14:32
Steve Gale said…
Thanks Tristan, I’ll keep a look out.
17 June 2020 at 18:41
Stewart said…
There is plenty of habitat available for it so its recolonisation might be quicker than expected... well done Steve...
18 June 2020 at 17:22
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more