X-wing

Just a few years ago (at least, the 1970s feels like quite a short time ago to me) the Juniper Shieldbug was scarce in this country because its only foodplant was hard to find: the bug was essentially confined to a few juniper woodlands in the south of England. But insects can be surprisingly adaptable, and this one had the bright idea of trying some other conifers, which it discovered it rather liked. In particular it became very partial to Nootka and Lawson cypresses, which are widely planted in parks and gardens, and ever since then its spread across the UK has been quite dramatic. It's also been helped by climate change, and recently has appeared in juniper woodland in northern England and Scotland. I found this one low down in the big Lawson cypress in our back garden, and I'm confident that there will be many more specimens overwintering in this huge tree.

Of the three green and red shieldbugs I get in my garden, I've always considered the Juniper Shieldbug to be the least attractive, because it lacks the strong colouring and elegant shape of the Hawthorn Shieldbug, and even manages to look quite washed out alongside the Birch Shieldbug,  the species it most closely resembles, because its colours are so much cooler and more muted. But I'm fairly happy with the way this one displayed and photographed on the cypress frond, isolated by the flash from a busy background. In an ideal world the spider web wouldn't be there, but this being nature photography I haven't edited it out. I'm actually wishing now that I'd flipped the frond over to see which spider was responsible, but I suspect that the shieldbug would have taken exception if I had.

The title of this post refers to a black 'X' mark within the membranous portion of the Juniper Shieldbug's forewings, which some identification guides say is the best way of distinguishing it from its Birch cousin. I've never been convinced by this though - you can make out that marking in this photo, especially if you unfocus your eyes, but it's not what I'd call obvious, and in some specimens I've seen you can barely make it out at all. It's better, I would say, to rely on those curved pink marks running from the back of the pronotum all the way down the corium, which always put me in mind of an upside-down lyre, but which Richard Jones describes rather more sensibly in his invaluable book Shieldbugs as being boomerang-shaped. Incidentally, Mr Jones says that the Juniper Shieldbug is one of our prettiest and most distinctive shieldbugs - so I consider myself duly corrected.