Acorn weevil

I've always had an inordinate fondness for weevils, especially those with really long snouts such as the Acorn Weevil Curculio glandium. The female uses the long snout to bore into the centre of an acorn to lay her egg. The larva feeds within the acorn and eventually bores its way out. The larvae are short, and cylindrical in shape, and move by means of ridges on the underside of the body.

Pete and I spent the day recording plants and insects at an event organised by our local Environmental Records Centre on some fenland farms near Thorney. Warm sunshine really brought the insects out, and it was soon apparent that what appeared to be fairly sterile intensive arable land still retained quite high levels of biodiversity, at least locally in small plantations, ditches and field margins.

In terms of plants the most exciting discovery was made at the end of the day. We stopped at a rather unprepossessing road-side drain in the hope of boosting our species count with some aquatics, and were amazed to find a very sizable population of Opposite-leaved Pondweed Groenlandia densa, a species now classified as Vulnerable on the UK Red List. Sometimes I wonder if species such as this are overlooked because so few naturalists ever look in 'ordinary' farmland....