AES Insect Show 2014

One of the big insect events on my calendar has always been the Amateur Entomologists Society (AES) October show at Kempton Park racecourse. Because I've been at uni for the past 3 years, unfortunately I've not actually been able to go for ages- but this year, now I've graduated (argh!), I've not been up in Birmingham this weekend, and was able to go! Annoyingly, the weather was pretty horrendous, which made getting there and back a bit tricky, although the show itself is thankfully indoors. We managed to just about avoid the rain!

The AES show happens once every year, and basically it's an entomologist's heaven. Both floors of the building are packed out with stalls, selling a range of live and pinned insects (and spiders, plenty of tarantulas), books, art, shells and scientific equipment like nets, collecting jars and the like. It's pretty fantastic, and I've not come across anything else to quite the same scale or quite the same focused interest on insects.

The favourites to sell I think perhaps goes to the tarantulas (there are a lot of spider stands), but there are also tons of snails, millipedes, stick insects, praying mantids... and a couple of other rarer things, like katydids, grasshoppers, scorpions and hermit crabs. There were some pretty impressive boxes of snails, that kept trying to escape out the sides!

As a member of the Phasmid Study Group (PSG), I always make a bit of a beeline towards their stand at this show. Especially since I haven't been able to get to their meetings quite as regularly recently (again, due to being in Birmingham for university), it was quite nice to check out how the stand looked, and who was hanging around. Nice to see some of the old familiar faces.

 

One of the most popular things to sell at the AES meeting is pinned out insects- beetles and especially butterflies make up the bulk of these. There are some lovely blue morpho butterflies, atlas and other exotics, as well as native peacocks and the common brown species; wall, meadow and speckled wood. There was one stall that was selling pinned bullet and fire ants, which sold out of the larger soldiers very quickly after we got there and had a bit of a wander round.

I'm not such a fan of the dead specimens, but there are always loads of live ones to keep; there were quite a few very nice millipedes that really caught my eye, but alas, I haven't really got the space for any more than the one tank I already have (pink-legged millipedes). I rather fancy some nice orange ones one day though...

It was a pretty great day, and even managed to not spend a fortune on insects. And we didn't get soaked either! 

Marbled white butterflies

Marbled white butterflies are one of my favourite things to see during the summer season. Of course, it now being October, there aren't any about any more- but I'm very behind on writing posts! 

Widespread in the south of England, their major distribution reaches up to about the midlands. Here in Dorset, they're one of the most common butterflies I see, especially up at Durlston, where there's loads of unimproved grassland, their favourite habitat. Walking through the fields on a Ragwort picking mission, you can stir up tens of them during the peak warm season, which is quite a sight to see!

Unfortunately I don't have very many good pictures at all, as butterflies are tricky to take pictures of. They just don't like staying still! This one was a bit crumpled from being caught in a spider's web, so it was having a rest on a stalk before attempting flight.

 

A look at UKbutterflies.co.uk rewards some more specific species information, with subspecies and the like. I'm not that good at identifying between male and female, so the one in the photos above will remain a mystery unless someone knows! I'd give a stab at saying it was a male though, as it's got a more greeny underside than reddish, which a female would have.