I ran across (quite literally; I was out for a jog) the Cambridge BioBlitz at dusk on Coe Fen, and stopped to join a crowd of people gathered around a crowd of insects gathered on a vertical white bed sheet gathered around one side of a bright white lantern.
I asked one of the volunteers whether the aim was to count species, or members per species per unit of time, or something else. She shrugged and directed me to a man carrying a large folded butterfly net.
While I walked over to Net Man, I noticed several of the other volunteers passing around a glass vial. Each of them sniffed it gingerly, pulled a face of disgust and passed it on to the next volunteer.
Net Man told me the aim was just to count species. For each specimen, if the species were readily identifiable, that species would be entered in the log immediately; if not, the specimen would be collected for a more detailed examination.
At this point, he was interrupted by an eager beaver volunteer, who passed him the vial. You’ve got to sniff it!
said Eager Beaver. Net Man swung his torch up to the vial.
That’s a Nicrophorus,
he said, A sextant beetle. I’m not sniffing that! Anyway, it’s covered in mites.
Nothing wrong with that,
Eager Beaver countered. Go on, sniff it!
They make my skin crawl,
replied Net Man. He turned to me with the beetle. I thought for a moment he was going to make me sniff it (which I was quite prepared to; I’ve not sniffed a Nicrophorus before), but he just held it up so that I could see it better. Under the bright torch light, the mites were clearly visible. A quick glance and you might mistake them for patterning, but hold your gaze a moment longer and you’d notice them moving. The flow of their movement reminded me of cows grazing.
It’s basically just a bus,
volunteered Eager Beaver. The beetle’s the bus; the mites are the passengers. The people on a bus don’t make your skin crawl, do they?
Well…
said Net Man. They laughed heartily. Given the stories I’ve heard about the remarkably strange people my friends have encountered on Cambridgeshire buses, this was a predictable joke.
Net Man returned his attention to the beetle, who, in its spot-lit crystal canister, was now being gazed upon by several curious onlookers.
These beetles,
he declaimed, Are remarkable carnivores. They like nothing better to eat than mice. They’ll work together to drag a mouse into a hole in the ground. Then they chew up the insides and lay eggs in the middle so the larvae can eat what’s left of the mouse on the way out.
That must make the mouse’s skin crawl,
I suggested. This brilliantly humorous observation evidently marked me out as the most lay of laymen, because it was immediately ignored by all present. Somebody muttered something about going to join his friend who was looking for bats. Far off in the distance, an owl hooted.
I wished Net Man and Eager Beaver good luck in their survey, and resumed my jog. Crossing the narrow span of Coe Fen Footbridge in the gloaming, I very nearly tripped over a man huddled to the railing in dark clothing. He excused himself by explaining he was looking for bats.
This story is hilarious.
It’s all true, too. Apart from the bit about the owl. Well, there’s a chance an owl hooted somewhere at that moment, but if it did, I didn’t hear it.
For readers tempted to take up the hobbies described above, other than jogging, which are much more laudable than I’ve made them sound, here’s a good list of links providing further information on biodiversity and biological recording.
You might also enjoy this piece by Lucy Cooke, who has over me the advantages that she is winsomely articulate, is in a much more exciting location, and has included in her article a video of a pheromone-leaking bat with a big dong.