Small World Discoveries
by Tony Enticknap - tickspics
Taking a close look at insects and other small species that can be found in and around East Dorset and the New Forest ...
About
Although my general wildlife photography website www.tickspics.com is still functional and will eventually be updated, opportunities for adding fresh content were put on hold for nearly two years as a result of the pandemic and associated restrictions on overseas travel. The regulations at the time also curtailed any local visits to my regular 'birding sites' along the coast so, like many others, I had to take photos much closer to home.
Macro was something I'd only dabbled with on group trips to tropical rainforest locations such as Costa Rica and the Peruvian Amazon but, for some strange reason, it was a genre of nature photography that I'd never given any time to at home, apart from the occasional photo of a butterfly in the garden.
Fortunately, that was all to change as I got more and more into photographing insects, and later spiders. My general interest grew as I discovered new species because, as well as wanting to identify them, I was learning about their ecology and life cycle. During my first full season, from the summer of 2020 to the end of the following year, I'd catalogued well over 400 species of which a fair few were nationally scarce or rarely photographed.
I never realised how many different types of invertebrate species we have in Britain and certainly didn't appreciate how difficult it was going to be to identify them. If you see a bird that's unfamiliar you can usually identify it relatively easily from a book, but that's certainly not the case with many of the insect groups. The popular species such as butterflies, moths, dragonflies, hoverflies etc. are well covered and, for some of those species, there's more than one good field guide. But you won't find a book that helps with the identification of beetles, bugs, wasps or sawflies, and certainly not flies, so easily. Yes, there are a few specialist books that concentrate on a particular type of species, such as ground beetles for example, but there aren't any that cover all the families. Of course, books are not the only resource, as a few of these groups have excellent websites but, for the most part, you'll need to do a fair bit of research to build up your knowledge of the more complicated species, particularly the likes of wasps and flies.
The idea of starting this website stemmed from the above, because I wanted to find a way that I could quickly see all the species I'd photographed of a particular type in one place and have somewhere that I could add identification notes and other useful information to help me in the future. Linking a list of species with separate notes, cross-referenced to stored photos doesn't work, so this is my attempt at trying to resolve that issue.
The website now provides a photographic record for all of the invertebrate species that I've encountered which, unless otherwise stated, have been from locations relatively close to where I live in East Dorset; an area that is bordered by Cranborne Chase to the north and the New Forest to the east and, to the south, the Dorset heaths and coastline from Pennington Marsh in Hampshire across to the Purbecks. I'm fortunate that this slightly enlarged 'home patch' includes a wide range of habitats together with a couple of notable locations where there are some scarce and nationally rare species.
Whilst it's not practical to show individual locations on a map of this scale, the 20-mile or so radius circle shown here encompasses most of the sites I regularly visit. There are a couple of locations outside of this area that I might visit once in a while such as Portland and the eastern side of the New Forest and, notably, the Alner's Gorse Butterfly Reserve at Hazelbury Bryan in West Dorset that is actually off the map but, all in all, it provides a pretty good indication.
The various albums are generally arranged in systematic order, subdivided or split as appropriate, subject to the classification of the species group. The scientific name of the species takes precedence over any given name except for butterflies and moths, which have traditionally recognised and well-known common names. Of course, there are many other frequently observed species that have acquired names, such as the Buff-tailed Bumble Bee, Field Digger Wasp, Dock Bug or Wasp Spider to name a few, but the vast majority of insects are only known by their formal scientific name. In fact, many entomologists only use the scientific name simply because it can't be mistaken. However, in an effort to appeal to the casual observer, some authors have started giving common names to all manner of species that were only previously known by their scientific name. The problem is that these names are made-up and whilst they may become familiar to some, they don't have universal recognition and, consequently, often lead to confusion.
Not surprisingly, with over 24,000 insects on the British List, there are a large number that cannot be properly or reliably identified from photos, so quite a few of the species featured here will be confirmed as genus.sp or, in the case of certain groups such as Ichneumon Wasps , as subfamily (...inae) sp.
With the exception of a few 'staged' photos taken in the garden, every species seen here has been observed and photographed in its natural habitat. The photos confirm the location and, if relevant, make note of the habitat. I do not collect specimens and have no desire to examine dead creatures purely to confirm their identity. If an insect cannot be reliably identified from a photo, then I'm happy that it's left undetermined, in which case you would see something like Ectemnius cf.lituratus for example, where cf. (from the Latin word confer, meaning 'to compare') is the recognised way of suggesting that the species is likely, but cannot be conclusively confirmed.
Written accounts vary dependent on the species and its respective family or order. Whereas some accounts will be brief, others may be quite detailed, especially for species I find interesting or where I want to record information to aid future identification. Individual accounts may be for a specific species or for a group of related species, which could be the genus, subfamily, family or indeed order if it only contains a couple of species, as with scorpionflies and a number of the other smaller orders.
Although I've taken care in identifying and categorising species, including seeking expert help when required, there may well be errors or inaccuracies. The website is an ongoing evolving project and, as such, written accounts will be regularly reviewed and corrected or expanded as required. However, if you notice an error or anomaly, or have a suggestion or comment, then please make contact using the following form.
A final word ....
I appreciate that some of the terms used when dealing with the taxonomy and classification of species may not be familiar, so I thought it would be useful to follow this introduction with a brief explanation.
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