Weevil Knievel

I spent a couple of happy hours in Trench Wood this afternoon, getting some invertebrate therapy. I arrived in bright sunshine, but by the time I was walking back along the main ride towards the car par it had clouded over, so I took this in pretty poor light. At the time I was checking the aspen saplings along the ride for hoppers - it's a few days now since I last spotted one, and I find that I'm suffering from hopper withdrawal - but sadly I had no luck in that department. But as I hadn't actually been looking for aspen leaf-rolling weevils, this male was an unexpectedly nice find, and more than adequate compensation for the hoppers.

When I first spotted him he was asleep on a half-dead leaf, with his antennae tucked under his head, and I rather thought that he might be dead himself. But as I turned the shoot to try to get better light on him, he woke up and marched to the end of this twig, where he stopped and contemplated taking flight. I know this, because I've now watched several Ant Lab films, in which weevils always seem to use the same technique: lift as many legs off the ground as possible, then spread the elytra and flip out the wings to generate lift. This chap shuffled about on the end of the twig, experimentally lifting different combinations of legs, but though he managed to get three off the twig a couple of times, and even began to open his wing cases, he kept losing his nerve and settling back down again. Eventually he turned and stomped back down the twig, onto a leaf that gave him a better platform for take-off, and at this point I knew that it was now a question of when, not if, he'd launch. I was holding focus on him and shooting on burst, hoping to capture the moment, but when he did take off the movement was so fast that it happened between one shutter click and the next. With better light and a faster shutter speed I might have caught it, but there would still be a lot of luck involved, I think.

I wrote quite a bit about aspen leaf-rolling weevils in this blip, so I'll spare you any repetition today, except to recommend once again that you should read this article if you'd like to know more about them. I'm indebted - or maybe not - to R for the title of this post, which he produced after hearing how fast the tiny guy was able to launch himself into the air. I'll be seeing a divorce lawyer in the morning.

Finally, my hoverfly of the day has gone up on my Facebook page, if you'd care to take a look.