Collecting beetles

First find your beetle. CC image by Jim Champion.

The Joint Committee for the Conservation of British Invertebrates has written a Code of Conduct for collecting insects and other invertebrates, which you should have a look at (it includes things about permission and avoiding damage to habitats). But invertebrates don't get a huge amount of official protection under UK law. A few beetles are named in Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (there's a list here in table 2A- you'll be unlikely to come across any of these but at least you'll know what they are).

But now is the time to be imaginative and get searching. Your basic entomological technique is 'grubbing' - you've got to get stuck in and search about directly. Check under large stones and in soil, in amongst moss, within heaps of grass or leaves, down inside tussocks, under bark, inside rotting wood, at the base of trees, amongst fungi and dung and dead things... You can try river banks, woodland, grassland, saltmarshes, ponds... You can use a trowel, a sweep net, a stick and beating tray for vegetation... (There's more enthusiastic if antique advice here).

Another approach is to encourage the beetles to come to you - this only works with active species like the ground beetles though. Mr Telfer has lots of advice on using pitfall traps. If you're going to use propylene glycol in the bottom you really must make sure you protect it so passing animals don't poison themselves (propylene glycol is less harmful than ethylene glycol) - some kind of grid or lid is necessary.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has a page summarising some other methods you might want to experiment with. But you have to remember that you'll be collecting your specimens over a dreary British autumn and winter, and many trapping techniques will only work when it's sunny and summery and all sorts of species are out in force. Grubbing and pitfall traps will be a considerably better bet than malaise nets for you.

A dung-baited pitfall trap (nice). Note the mesh to protect mammals. Picture borrowed from the Amateur Entomologists' Society website (with hope that they won't mind too much).

It occurs to me that there aren't just terrestrial beetles - there are almost 300 species that live in or near water. A lot are tiny and difficult to identify. But they are there if you want to investigate them (and their swimming-related adaptations). Carlos Aguilar (Paraguayan coleopterist) has written a document that contains more than you could believe possible about catching aquatic beetles. You might be able to adapt some of his ideas. We might have some equipment you can use (and that would include life-jackets and lines if you're going near water).

Read on for methods of killing beetles (sorry), and how to pin and label them.