Official publication date 14 May, so now available in all good bookshops.

First cool bug of the Barnes Common Bug Hunt is Peribalus strictus. Once rare, now all over South-east England this year.

I found this grid at the entrance to a housing estate at Elephant and Castle in South London. It’s much smaller than those you see in more rural locations used to stop horses, sheep and cows escaping, so I think it’s probably to keep squirrels or rats out.

For anyone wondering what a gooseberry bottle has got to do with woodlice, you can get the full low-down when the book is published later in the year.

The indexer working through my book on woodlice is doing a very thorough job.

Harmonia quadripunctata, the cream-streaked ladybird. Not rare, but I hardly ever see it. Deepest Surrey today. The last field visit of the year.

Too late to go in the book now.

Cool or yuck? I think this is Dermacentor reticulatus the ornate cow tick, or marsh tick. Either it’s very localized in Britain, or there aren’t many tick recorders out there. It’s known from the West Country, Wales, and Essex. These were on the outskirts of Basildon today.

A once common butterfly from my youth. Wall brown, Lasiommata mergera named for its habit of resting on brickwork. Now seriously declined and vanished from much or ifs former range in the last 40 years. The is the first one I’ve seen in at least a decade, possibly two. Basildon.

New to me. Since its British discovery in East Anglia in 1997, Sphragisticus nebulous seems to have started to spread widely. Loads near Rochester, Kent, a couple of weeks ago.

Always check no-spot ladybirds just in case Cynegetis impunctata ever turns up in Britain. You have to look at the claws, which are not bifurcate, but simply with a small basal tooth. But as usual it’s still the slightly larger 24-spot, Subcoccinella vigintiquatuorpunctata.

Firebug, Pyrrhocoris apterus, just after its final moult into adulthood, but before the distinctive black markings have been laid down. East Dulwich this afternoon, part of a large colony on a street lime (linden) tree.

It’s mini, but it’s still a Bug Hunt. Tomorrow 14:00-16:00.

Why do harvestmen have long legs? Because they have no antennae. Instead they use their limbs as 8 radial trip-wire warning sensors against danger approaching from any direction.

This is now becoming a regular, firebug, Pyrrhocoris apterus, and like all the specimens I now see it is not apterous (wingless) but fully winged. Rochester today.

New to me, Sciocoris homalonotus, one of several, including nymphs, swept near Maidstone yesterday.

A hazel leaf cigar, it must be the leaf roll of the hazel leaf-roller weevil Apoderus coryli. This one is quite large and loose, I’ve seen them smaller and neater.