Dock Bugs and their Fruit.

The first photographs that I am going to show you date back to early June. Dock Bugs can often be found on Dock ( 🙂 ) and Dock can be very colourful so it makes a good picture so I started photographing for the colour but then I got distracted and in the end I never got around to posting these pictures.

These are Dock Bugs.

They look like a Shield Bug but they are actually Squashbugs. The most obvious difference being that Squashbugs have four segments to their antennae and Shield Bugs have five.

Here are some Dock Bugs on a nice red leaf.

This was when I became distracted by their mouth parts. Dock Bugs have a long piercing beak like structure called a rostrum that they use to suck sap from the Dock that they feed on. This beak is normally carried under the body and I hadn’t really paid it much attention.

You can see it in these next photographs.

In the heat of passion and probably being over excited by the red leaf, my bugs threw their inhibitions to the wind and let it all hang out…

I looked at these pictures and thought, “Blimey! My Bug’s got an extra leg!”

That is when I forgot about the colours and became interested in photographing the mouth parts.

Well that post never happened. I became distracted by some pretty little thing and forgot about the rostrum of Coreus marginatus until today.

Today I found and photographed the result of all of that hanky panky amid the Dock leaves and I do like getting the nymphs of the species.

This is a late instar nymph of Coreus marginatus. Note the different body  shape and narrow “shoulders.”

I like getting the little ones. 🙂

Thank you for your patience, I got there in the end.