#sitona

Who is this? Seen in the uk

The garden of good and weevil

This is definitely a weevil in the genus Sitona, many of which look very similar to each other and can be hard to tell apart by photo.

However, this is probably the very common...

Saw this lovely little fellow on my drying bedsheet today! Do you know who this creature may be? I thought it could perhaps be some sort of weevil but I'm unsure if the face I long enough. I'm in Scotland :> it may be difficult to see size but I'd say it's about or four or five mm long. Thank you for all you do :)

Heading south, en route to Wellington and hence the South Island. We stopped and stayed at a few places on the way, including Cape Egmont to see the lighthouse and beach, and Ōpunake because I wanted a look at the bay, cliffs, and beach.

Quite a lot of the area we were driving through was covered in small conical hills - that's because it's all volcanic landslide debris from Taranaki, 20km away.

The cliffs at Ōpunake and the rocky beaches along the rest of the coastline are more evidence of the violent geology.

The boulders in the layers still in the cliff are fridge sized.

Most of the land had been cleared of native vegetation for agriculture, but there were still a few local species around. And extensive burrows by Tiger Beetle larvae in the sand and volcanic ash deposits. Here's a few I've already covered elsewhere.

Art af snudebille (Sitona gressorius)

På Gyvel (Cytisus scoparius).

Veevil species (Sitona gressorius)

A species of weevil native to Europe, but now spread to North America, and New Zealand in 1996. It's a threat to farm productivity in the latter because of the damage it does to clover. The Braconid wasp Microctonus aethiopoides is being trialed as a biological control in Southland.

Art af snudebille (Sitona gressorius)

På en af artens foderplanter, lupin (Lupinus sp.).

Weevil species (Sitona gressorius)

We stopped in Cromwell because @purrdence wanted to look at the museum exhibit on the Chinese goldminers that had once lived in the area. It was quite an interesting exhibit, as was the one about the construction of the dam that largely solved the problem that the area is the one of driest in New Zealand despite having its longest river. Admittedly the new water level flooded a significant part of town. And the discovery of a large faultline in the immeadiate vicinity of the dam site made a lot of people very unhappy. I also found out about the Cromwell Flightless Chafer Reserve, but see a following post about that.

Much of the rock in the area is schist, or heavily foliated schist, originally deposited as marine sediments 200myo, eroded 60myo, uplifted 2myo ago, brutalised by the Ice ages until 16kyo, and treated rather harshly by the Europeans stripping every possible mountain slope that might contain gold.

A few species, already seen elsewhere.