Following a period of quite intense work-related stress and my second bout of covid in six months, I decided that I had had enough of all these highly inconvenient life occurrences, and booked a solo trip to Jersey to find bugs. This was the first truly focused trip for my personal project of finding and illustrating all of the (mostly) European shieldbugs, and my first travelling trip involving flights (although not technically considered international) totally by myself.
The largest of the Channel Islands, Jersey’s south-western coast is home to an unusual array of interesting shieldbugs. Of the 46 species which have been reported from the island (and that tally is ever-increasing), 14 of them would be entirely new for me. While I certainly didn’t bank on seeing all 14 new species in the relatively short time I had, I thought I’d focus on a few rarities with concentrated clusters of records: Sciocoris curtisans, Menaccarus arenicola, Byrsinus flavicornis, Canthophorus impressus and Eurydema dominulus. I was also aiming to take decent shots of any others I came across for the project.
The ‘first day’ got off to a rocky start: my midday flight was cancelled due to fog obscuring the short runway on the island, so after being escorted from the airport by security I had to rebook another flight for the following afternoon. Rather than dwell on having lost a day, I killed time by revising my plans – two full days, five main target species, and a very tight schedule. I chose to focus on three primary sites where I could spend the most time, and see where the rest of the day went after I’d surveyed those.
Eventually, the following evening I finally arrived. The first thing I did after taking the rental car for a spin (a Toyota Aygo, a nippy little car perfect for Jersey’s narrow roads) was take a walk into St. Helier to counteract all the sitting around in hotels and airports I’d done in the last two days. After walking through the town, I followed up a record of Eurydema dominulus from near South Hill Gardens and found a delightful patch of wild plants with huge numbers of brassicas, Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) and grasses, sheltered by a rock face – perfect shieldbug habitat. The first species was expected but delightful, the inimitable Graphosoma italicum. These beauties were followed by a rather pale-looking Hairy Shieldbug (Dolycoris baccarum), an adult and a nymph of Brassica Shieldbug (Eurydema oleracea) and a late-instar nymph of Nezara viridula. This was a very promising start, considering I had been on the island for less than two hours.
Above: Nezara viridula nymph, Eurydema oleracea, Dolycoris baccarum, Graphosoma italicum.
DAY 1: LES MIELLES AND OUAISNE
The following day, I headed for the heathy habitat of Les Mielles Nature Reserve next to St. Ouen, looking for the tiny, hairy Byrsinus. The habitat was very promising, with low-growing scrub, sandy soil and small clusters of Erodium. After having walked a few hundred metres from a carpark and taking in the habitat en route, I realised that this may be more difficult than I first envisioned, for nearly every plant was suitable for bugs. There were great swathes of them – endless brassicas, thousands of Wild Carrot heads, plenty of scrubby heath areas. I saw an Argiope and a beautiful Blue-winged Grasshopper (Oedipoda caerulescens). I was then advised to leave the vicinity of a dead tree by some of the politest wasps I’ve ever encountered, who buzzed me slowly to let me know that they were nesting nearby, but weren’t persistent or pushy at all.
Above: Blue-winged Grasshopper
I stopped next to a sheltered patch of bramble and started looking closely at the holes left by digging rabbits. This is a good tried-and-tested method for finding insects that live in sandy habitats, as the dug out holes function in the same way as antlion pits, and tend to capture debris and insects who cannot get back out again. I scooped up a handful of sand and crud from inside one of these pits and sure enough, the first more unusual shieldbug of the trip emerged: a very speedy little Cornish Shieldbug (Geotomus punctulatus). On the mainland, this species is very rare and found at only a couple of localities, the most reliable of which is Sennen Cove in Cornwall. On the Channel Islands, however, it is a different story, and they are relatively abundant in the right habitats. I found several tens of individuals just using this method alone, in a range of different life stages from nymphs to teneral and mature adults. I examined each one carefully to make sure I hadn’t missed a Byrsinus among them.
At this point, however, it started to rain, and it didn’t stop until the evening. The snails had pre-empted the rain and were out munching on vegetation in large mixed-size groups of Cochlicella acuta and Cernuella virgata.
Above: Cochlicella acuta
I tried in vain to get out to a couple of other sites between showers, but the substrate was wet and the rain unpleasantly chilly, so I gave up for a couple of hours and retreated to the safety of the nearest pub. After it looked like the rain was done (it wasn’t!) I headed down to the habitat behind Ouaisne Beach, where I saw very little else in the way of insects, although I did see a beautiful little Spiny / Jersey Toad (Bufo spinosus) who was out for a wet walk.
DAY 2: ISLAND ROAD TRIP
The next day dawned with a blazing sun and a hint of wispy cloud. I woke up from another set of heat-induced nightmares with the bright idea of doing a day-long road trip, blitzing every site I wanted to visit on the island.
I started by revisiting the sites from the previous day. It was only 20 degrees, but the sun evaporating the last of the previous days’ worth of rain made it noticeably more humid, so the walking was a bit tougher. I started at the dunes of La Braye again, and tried to find shieldbugs for over an hour with no success. There were lots of butterflies on the wing, including Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus), Wall (Lasiommata megera), Grayling (Hipparchia semele), Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina), Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus) and whites. Blue-winged Grasshoppers buzzed from under my feet, and the occasional Lesser Bloody-nosed Beetle (Timarcha goettingensis) ambled across the path. Still I found nothing in terms of shieldbugs. As I admitted defeat and headed back to the car park, I saw a flash of red on the brassicas – a false alarm, just a few pairs of Corizus hyoscyami. Green Lizards (Lacerta bilineata), already fully charged up, skittered through the grasses by my feet.
Above: Corizus hyoscyami pair, Timarcha goettingensis, Neottiglossa sp.
Originally, I planned to visit a few sites on the north of the island to try my luck with Large Chequered Skipper, but I spontaneously dropped in on the Les Mielles Nature Reserve again, to follow up a hunch. My gut feeling was that if I’d found so many Geotomus yesterday in poorer weather conditions, then there should be far more out and about in more pleasant weather.
This feeling was correct, and before long I was scooping plenty of Geotomus into my tiny tray again. I targeted more open areas this time with plenty of Erodium, and started turning up tiny nymphs of an Odontoscelis sp. – but whether this was O. lineola or an early instar of the coveted O. fuliginosa I couldn’t tell (though I suspect the former).
Finally, I scooped and scattered a handful of sand and saw a rotund shape that could only be my target: Byrsinus flavicornis!
It was quite easy to tell this species from the Geotomus, despite superficial similarities. Byrsinus has a rounded bottom, a more gentle shape at both ends (the head has quite a flattish nose), whereas Geotomus has a sort of rhombic shape with the wing cases tapering to a point, and a neatly semicircular head. There are some differences in colour in mature adults, with Byrsinus a transluscent brown colour with quite brown tinted wing cases, while Geotomus is typically black, although can come in slightly brownish versions. The final telltale sign is the amount of hairs on the pronotum – Byrsinus are bristly, with a large number of long, straight bristles around the pronotum, whereas Geotomus have fewer, smaller hairs scattered around. They even sat side-by-side in my dish for perfect comparison!
Above: Byrsinus flavicornis (left) and Geotomus punctulatus (right).
After spending a happy hour photographing these lovely little beasties, I continued my journey around the island, seeing nothing but a Gorse Shieldbug (Piezodorus lituratus) nymph on my singular stop up north. I finally stopped in Gorey, where after an incredibly humid hike to and from Victoria Tower, where I saw lots of Wall Lizards (Podarcis muralis), I finally visited the golf course to look for Bastard-toadflax (Thesium humifusum) and its associated shieldbug, Canthophorus impressus.
Thesium humifusum is one of several plants known as “Bastard Toadflax” and is hemi-parasitic on various species of bedstraw, including Hedge Bedstraw (Galium mollugo) and Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium verum). These are both very common across Jersey, which is why I was also surprised at the lack of Dyroderes umbraculatus, which has scattered records only across the island. I suspect that this phenomenon is caused by an overabundance of suitable habitat – with more favourable areas, the bugs can essentially choose which microhabitat and area they would like to live in. This contrasts heavily to the areas I usually survey, such as road verges, where resources are more limited and species are concentrated into much smaller areas with denser populations.
My botanical knowledge is developing, particularly for foodplants, but I wasn’t certain that I’d recognise this plant if I saw it, as I wasn’t sure how small it was going to be. I examined each patch of bedstraw carefully on the edge of the golf course, which had a beautiful verge of wild grassland and plants, minding out for passing golfers, who thankfully completely ignored me. Finally I found it, growing in a fairly small but dense mat, adorned with beautiful and very tiny white flowers. It stood out quite nicely among the grasses. The Bastard Toadflax Shieldbug (Canthophorus impressus), usually now called the Down Shieldbug, is a rare species probably restricted by its selective choice of foodplant, which is present only in chalk downland sites. I didn’t even have to search for these ones, there were several adults already walking about on top of the foodplant and several nymphs visible underneath it, close to the ground. They were very tolerant of being observed and photographed as long as you didn’t move very much, as they would drop from their position without hesitation. Another great species to see.
Above and below: Canthophorus impressus.
DAY 3: LA BRAYE
On the final morning I had a couple of hours to kill before I needed to be at the airport, so I had one last visit to La Braye. It was a hazy, sunny morning and already significantly warmer than the previous day.
I focused my efforts on one area of habitat dominated by Hare’s Tail Grass (Lagurus ovatus) with various small hawkweeds and other grasses. My first find of the day was the unusual-looking carabid Panagaeus bipustulatus, which favours coastal dune habitat. While not a particularly rare species, it was one I definitely hadn't seen before.
I sat down and poked about in the vegetation, and my heart skipped when I almost immediately spotted a familiar shape – Menaccarus arenicola! Albeit a dead one, but a new species is a new species. This was highly exciting, and although there’s no real way to photograph a specimen that makes it look alive, this was the best I had. I ended up finding four more dead ones (a bonanza in terms of specimens) but no live individuals. The site is already known for this species, so it isn’t a particularly unusual find for Jersey, but this species is unknown on the British mainland and presumably not particularly common anywhere else. I don’t know why I found these specimens on that morning yet found nothing on my previous visits to the dunes, despite looking in the same places. They didn’t seem very recently dead (so not victims of the previous day’s rain), and most were dried out and missing limbs, antennae, and the characteristic row of bristles on the edge of the head. I was also curious as to why I never found any Sciocoris – I assumed that they would be the more populous species at this site.
This fun and very packed long weekend was a good introduction to Jersey, and really opened my eyes to the interesting and unique position occupied by the Channel Islands. I should probably have booked a bit longer to try and also find Large Chequered Skipper (Heteropterus morpheus), a Jersey speciality, but that will have to wait for another occasion. Four new species was a good tally, with three of these on my original 5-species target list. The trip was also my first taste of solo travelling, and for my current personal project, too - undoubtedly paving the way for plenty of future adventures!
Shieldbug tally:
• Byrsinus flavicordis
• Canthophorus impressus
• Dolycoris baccarum
• Eurydema oleracea
• Geotomus punctulatus
• Graphosoma italicum
• Menaccarus arenicola
• Neottiglossa sp.
• Nezara viridula
• Odontoscelis sp.
• Piezodorus lituratus