Beetlemania
It was an
invitation too good to miss. Martin Collier, Norfolk’s beetle recorder, had heard about
NWT Thorpe Marshes and was keen to visit the reserve to see what he could find.
Could I show him around? Writing Christmas cards was postponed and the
inevitable family conversations about beetle drives and popular beat combos
from Liverpool were put to one side. It was a
bright December morning when I joined Martin and recording colleague Steve Lane on the marshes. Beetle
records on the reserve to date have been mostly relatively big, bright species
on summer flowers. Surely an icy day in December was far from promising? How
wrong that was. The key technique was a fistful of damp marsh vegetation, often
from a ditch edge, shaken through a coarse mesh sieve into a white bowl. The
volume of invertebrates, once you had your eye in, was remarkable. Most were tiny:
beetles of various shapes, almost microscopic harvestmen, pseudoscorpions. I
photographed and noted names of bigger species; a lo…
