www.aloadofbollox?
![Image](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_YpzeFIp4uKdfjtQ6j3nQlv_oQvkUlm_GL4TSdc76yT63L0yphY3ZEKo9Co1QBU6bJ6wP6ljbqTkIPWDOxbNGcIgcqurO3QJ8eYWk7F1l5MkzFLMf1U8y4lcaYLhgbzeoYnIuXlq3OHbT/s400/Lissonota.jpg)
A few days ago I was on Reigate Heath, walking across a boggy area littered with the stumps of recently felled coniferous trees. A black insect flew into view, at first I thought that it was a melanic damselfly. It landed close by and I was confronted with something that I had not seen before - a large ichneumon fly exhibiting a preposterously long ovipositor. It didn't settle for long, but I was sure that I could nail the identification. Back home my trawl through the literature matched it, I think, to a species of Lissonota - but which one? The popular field guides suggest setosa , or fundator , or 'many similar species'. The world wide web threw up many images of supposed Lissonata , some of which were clearly not, being dragonflies and even shieldbugs! (I came across another at Thursley Common this week (image below) which looked a lot smaller than my Reigate specimen. It didn't stay still for long). This neatly illustrates a problem that the 'official'