bugmanjones.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I've got several used stereomicroscopes for sale. Nothing high end, and several of them bargain budget pieces. I've put them on by blog/website. Have a look. I had intended to bring them for sale at the AES Annual Exhibition this year. bugmanjones.com/2025/06/22/m...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Whilst doing a pollinator survey, I have fortuitously discovered that taking 0.6x selfies with a marbled white (Melanargia galathea) on one's nose is a great joy of life- can wholeheartedly recommend #butterfly #ecology #biodiversity #nature 🧪

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

Lace bug landed on my crossword musings. From the garden apple tree, under the shade of which I was ‘working’. Likely Physatocheila dumetorum, usually on hawthorn. Not broad enough for the ‘apple’ lace bug P. smreczynskii which I’ve only ever seen in New Forest.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Exciting news: I'm so glad (and still a bit in disbelief) to announce that I will soon be serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Medical and Veterinary Entomology journal of the Royal Entomological Society 🥹 I've been an associate editor at MVE for a while and it's been an amazing experience.

submitted 7 days ago • 3 comments

Fave fly of the day. So far. Platystoma seminationis. Dancing kiss fly it’s English name apparently. Courtship dance includes proboscis-to-proboscis nutrient exchange. Not rare but I don’t often see it. Purfleet.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Not rare, but I still get a thrill finding Agapanthia villosoviridescens. Purfleet.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

They’re out and about now. Just been sent this picture of female Lucanus cervus from Church Road, Crystal Palace.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Snatched out of the air with my bare hands. Wasp longhorn, Strangalia (now Rutpela) maculata. Always a delight.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

UPDATE: found a paper where authors rigorously de-waxed late instar Cryptolaemus larvae, they’re not too far off link.springer.com/article/10.1...

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

Green shieldbug nymphs just hatched from 28 eggs. Adults are camouflaged but domed nymphs are patterned with bright spots, sometimes on red — ladybird mimics. Most shieldbugs have paired ovaries each with 7 ovarioles so lay eggs in multiples of 14. Sent to me from Lee Green.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

King’s Gallery, Edwardians exhibition. Obviously I was drawn to this brooch using an Egyptian scarab picked up in his travels by Edward VII for Alexandra, when they were married in 1863. Clearly a dung beetle fan, she chose to have it in her marble bust by Mary Thornycroft.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Pleasantly surprised to see good numbers of Striped Shieldbugs (Graphosoma italicum) still at Ninefields, Waltham Abbey yesterday. I counted 36 alongside a short section of a small stream, including two mating pairs. In a mix of Hogweed, Cow Parsley and nettles. #EssexWildlife #UKBugs

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

One of my favourite spiders: Pisaura mirabilis. With her huge egg sac.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

It’s mad that two so closely related insects should produce so wildly different shaped galls on the same plant. Pea gall of Diplolepis eglanteriae and bedeguar of D. rosae.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

It’s always a challenge to identify a bit of a beetle. Ablattaria laevigata.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Trachyzelotes pedestris? Under brick Leyton brownfield site today.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Spiky! Deraeocoris ruber (Hemiptera: Miridae) nymph.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Woodpecker? damage to bee hotel.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Just been sent this great picture by a local friend who first thought it was a piece of Lego lying on the pavement. Mating lime hawks, Mimas tiliae. Plenty of limes (lindens) planted as street trees hereabouts. Sometimes I’m sent photos of the caterpillars.

submitted 17 days ago • 2 comments

Technically a ‘snail-killing fly’ family Sciomyzidae but still one of my favourite ‘picture-wings’. Trypetoptera punctulata. Maidstone today.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Agapanthia cardui, spreading west since its UK discovery at Folkestone in 2017. Lots north of Maidstone today.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

First small tort of the year. Fresh. Beautiful.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Rivellia syngenesiae is a pretty and distinctive picture wing fly. Not rare but I don’t see it often. Tower of London today.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Flying around in the garden earlier — Mononychus punctumalbum. Usually on yellow flag iris. Uncommon. But spreading? None of that foodplant in our small pond but we have a good selection of garden irises. I shall be keeping a close eye on the developing fruits later this year.

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

You’ll just have to take my word that I saw a humming-bird hawkmoth in the garden. A photo? Hah! Even the cat couldn’t get close.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Another living jewel. Actually a jewel beetle this time. Agrilus cuprescens on our garden currant bushes.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Green jewel in the garden. Rose chafer, Cetonia aurata. Not rare, but I’ve not seen one in this area before.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

A reminder: only monarch’s head ‘definitive’ stamps must have a barcode to be valid these days. Special issue pictorial stamps can still be used even though they don’t have barcodes. This is illustrated by the fact that today I received a letter with 44-year-old stamps on it.

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

Notre Dame looking wonderful; the ancient doors are really spectacular. The door jambs represent signs of the zodiac, starting bottom left with Aquarius. But Leo and Cancer (lobster) are transposed. And that is the worst Scorpio in the history of ecclesiastical stone masonry.

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Part of the ceiling of the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, assigned to Girolamo da Santacroce, 17th c. painted in grisaille camaieu on a blue background but with 19th c. Viennese framing. I’d just add that elephants used to be a lot better laundered and pressed then than they are nowadays.

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Uccello’s c1465 George and the dragon. The neatness of the mid-15th century florentine agriculture grips my attention. He needed to show this because he was apparently obsessed with perspective and the then novel concept of the vanishing point. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Word of the day: whale-horse. Potter & Sargent, 1973, Pedigree—words from nature.

submitted 28 days ago • 0 comments

Camponotus ligniperda? Carpenter ant. Biggest damn species I’ve ever seen. 13-15mm. Running running along the road in Sankt Gilgen near Salzburg.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Yesterday’s bug hunt near Salzburg found something with the wrong number of legs to be an insect. Smooth snake, Coronella austriaca. Called schlingnatter here, loop snake? Natter (German, snake) similar to Saxon English a nadder which later became an adder. Lovely creature.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Bug of the day. So far. Cercopis sanguinolenta. Wolfgangsee south of Salzburg.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

Loved the special display of Blaschka glass models of sea creatures at the Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna yesterday. I think they missed a trick by not selling reproductions in the museum shop.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Didn’t expect to find a Malaise trap in Vienna. University Botanical Gardens. Part, I think, of the ABOL Austrian Barcode of Life biodiversity inventory plan. The information notice shows a squirrel and a great tit, so slightly confusing to non-experts.

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

To the Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna today to find they have a special exhibition on house (museum) pests. I loved the introductory silverfish projection. At first they all emerge from under the door to scuttle about. But when the light goes on they all scurry away.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

The true quality of a natural history museum insect display can be judged by the species they select for much-larger-than-life-models. With the eared leafhopper Ledrus auritus, a snake-fly, and a mantis-fly on show the Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna is off to a very good start indeed.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

It’s perhaps no surprise that Rubens’s Head of the Medusa (1617/18) has scorpion and garden spiders in it, but I am pleased to find Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Eucharist in fruit wealth (c1655-60) has a cockchafer hidden right at the bottom. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

The infamous head-on-plate corner of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. It’s enough to put you off your apfel strudel.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

The view in my office today was mostly artwork by Egon Schiele from huge and fascinating major exhibition at Vienna’s Leopold Museum. Informative, insightful and moving.

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

Just as well I didn’t gulp from my bedside cup when I roused at 05:30 today in Vienna. Halyomorpha halys, marmorated shieldbug. Originally from Asia, now widely established in Europe and North America. Incidentally not marmite-rated as suggested by my idiotic phone autocorrect.

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

All large pots need to be supported on the backs of four small tortoises. I’m sure there’s an origin myth in the making here. Secession Building, Vienna.

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments