Home Business Listing Cwmtillery Colliery Country Files      Amphibians      Birds      Fungus      Insects      Mammals      Wetlands History Local Info Message Board Photo Album Places St Paul's Church Walks Weather Web Links Your Voices	Promoting Cwmtillery Countryside - Insects...
	Insects There are well over 1 million know species of insect, and make up the largest of all animal groups. With over 20,000 species living in the British Isles, they occupy almost every habitat you can imagine. Their food source includes every organic material, from wood to nectar to dung. The insect body consists of three regions, the head, the thorax and the abdomen,with the thorax supporting its six legs. Most insect life starts as an egg (some species give birth to active young), once hatched they grow very rapidly shedding its skin as it grows. This skin shedding is called moults and can do this up to ten times before reaching adult form called metamorphosis. Groups such as bugs, dragonflies, grasshoppers etc, develop their wings gradually and reach full size and functionally at their final moult. Beetles, flies, wasp, butterflies etc, often lack legs as well as wings and are called larvae or grubs. When fully grown, it is encased in a transparent skin called a pupa, and the outline of the now newly grown wings and legs can be seen. When all changes are complete, it breaks out of the pupa, dries its wings and files away. I will use this page to record any insect life I am able to photograph and identify. Devil's Coach-Horse Staphylinus olens Length 24mm All black in colour, long body with exposed abdominal segments. If threatened, it curls up its abdomen and opens it jaw. Shelters during daytime, and feeds after dark on invertebrates. Common and widespread in hedgerows and gardens.   Southern Hawker Dragonfly Aeshna cyanea Associated with ponds, lakes and canals, will be seen at a regular patch of water when hunting. Shows broad green stripes on thorax and abdomen with marking of similar colosation on abdomen except for the last three segments of the male which a blue. Widespread in south and central England but scarce in Wales. Flies from June - October.