For aspiring coleopterists

From Janson's British Beetles

After the frustrations of yesterdays spiders I found myself longing for the soothing world of beetles. A beetle on a pin is much easier to spin round to different angles for close inspection, than a spider lounging in a dish of alcohol.

As with a few of the other collection options, you might wish that you'd been able to get out in the summer to find beetles. But although many species are most active then, you'll also be able to find specimens over the winter and into the early spring. Instead of looking on flowers, you'll have to think of other habitats.

Darwin, as I mentioned before, was a keen beetle fan. Here you can read that he was always searching for new collecting methods. He wrote:

"I was very successful in collecting and inventing two new methods; I employed a labourer to scrape during the winter, moss off old trees and place it in a large bag, and likewise to collect the rubbish at the bottom of the barges in which reeds are brought from the fens, and thus I got some very rare species."

 You might not have your own labourer to help you, but you could certainly try shaking moss over a tray. I fear fen barges with reeds might be a thing of the past, but any pile of vegetation should be worth a look.  Similarly vintage advice suggests

"In the winter, very many beetles can be obtained by cutting isolated tufts of grass, pulling moss, etc., and shaking them over brown paper; the proceeds need not be examined on the spot, but can be taken home in a bag and carefully investigated indoors at leisure. In this way, by a judicious selection of likely-looking spots, a few hours' work out of doors will often furnish occupation for several evenings.

In the autumn, examining fungi and puff-balls, and sweeping among dead leaves under trees are very productive; and later still, the leaves (especially the black, damp, bottom layers) may be sifted or shaken over the brown paper with great results. 

Lycoperdina bovistae is found in association with Lycoperdon puffballs. ('Lycoperdon' means wolf fart. It really does).  PD image.

 On the sea-shore, heaps of decaying seaweed harbour many species, and dead fish or birds become capital traps; but a "keeper's tree" in a wood, with dead vermin nailed to it, is the luckiest thing to find.

Many species come to the running sap of the stumps of felled trees, and a great number haunt the wet burrows of the Goat Moth in the solid wood, whilst ants' nests, both in woods, tree trunks, and sandy places, produce an enormous number both of specimens and species, many of them being very rare.

Tapping rotten twigs and sticks, and shaking the damp bottom layers of grass and rubbish heaps and hay-stacks, will produce many species in profusion."

Naturally I am not suggesting that you go out and decimate the landscape and destroy all its trees, fungi and ants nests. And you might not feel like poking about in decaying animals. But the options are there (given you have permission to collect from the owner of the land and you're not taking something protected, natch). A couple of years ago a student submitted an excellent beetle collection, many specimens of which had come from dead wood. If you can look in different habitats you will find different species, so be hopeful and imaginative.

Interesting shape 'galleries' eaten by a larval Scolytinae beetle. CC Bernard Dupont