After coffees, stretches and yawns we were finally ready to hit the road again. Today's first port of call was Shapwick Heath NNR in Somerset. Bill Urwin was there and patiently awaiting our arrival. He promised a mixed bag of tricks and we were all excited at the prospect of getting to grips with this deservedly famous reserve.

I really like Bill, this would be the third time I'd met him this year. First occasion was to twitch a Yellow-rumped Warbler in Northumberland along with moth maestro and Ginger Baker lookalike wannabe, Billy Dykes. We saw the warbler and Bill treated us to an impromptu tour of the dales where we saw Black Grouse. All day long he kept us entertained with tales from yesteryear, the whole time swearing and cussing gratuitously, a hardened soldier would have blushed! The second time was to see Green Lizards in Dorset, my wife Sami was present and Bill was the perfect, sweet-mouthed, courteous gentleman(apart from when he let his arse crack completely fall out whilst on his hands and knees taking pics of Wall Lizards...) Thanks to his beard, immense wisdom and occasional staff, Bill's earned himself the nickname Gandalf (Papa Smurf to the irreverent!) and I was keen to discover what magic he would rustle up for us today.

We arrived at Shapwick where Bill greeted us with a no-nonsense, "what kept you?" and then we were chatting to NE staff who confirmed that we were allowed 'off piste' and to let them know what we found and a couple of safety pointers etc etc. It was round about this moment that Bill worked his magic, one of the staff kinda glazed over and said, "you can take the NE pick-up. I'll just find out where it is" Wow, it was very much a "these are not the droids you're looking for..." moment. Gandalf's still got that touch!

A few minutes later the pick-up arrived, we all jumped in and Bill drove us to an area known as Canada Farm Fields. We headed towards a well-vegetated water ditch where we found several bamboo canes sticking up. Attached to each was a length of string tied to the top of a partially submerged plastic bottle. Graeme, Dan and I shared a puzzled look, we'd not seen this before! "Haul 'em up then and tip the contents into the plastic trays. Let's see what we've got then" ordered a bemused looking Gandalf. First though, here's a pic of the ditch in question

Each plastic bottle, we were told, had been baited with chunks of bacon lardons and submerged some 18 hours earlier. Bill wasn't sure what would be inside but he seemed confident we'd all be suitably impressed. Well yeah, I mean just look at what we found, and this is from just one bottle trap! 

Prior to that moment I had just ONE species of Dytiscid on my PSL, so you could say I was a little bit blown away with it all...thankfully Bill knows his water beetles pretty damn well. Graeme wasn't far behind and we had the FSC Water Beetles guide to hand too. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother to type out the entire species list seen, but I'm going to make an exception this once because I know damn well I'm NEVER going to see this many new water beetles in one hit. It's worth repeating, if only to grip off a few coleopterists! Here are the beetles we identified:

Colymbetes fuscus

Acilius sulcatus

Dytiscus marginalis (not a lifer!)

Dytiscus dimidiatus

Rhantus suturalis

Rhantus frontalis

Hydaticus transversalis

Plus this lot which were found by netting through the weed rather than caught in the bottle traps:

Noterus clavicornis (also not a lifer!)

Hydrochara caraboides - Lesser Silver Diving Beetle

Agabus sturmii

Ilybius ater

Hydroporus angustatus

Laccophilus minutus

Hyphydrus ovatus

Anaceaena lutescens

Dryops similaris

Hydroporus planus

Hydroporus gyllenhalli

Liopterus haemorrhoidalis

Agabus bipustulatus

So, not too shabby a haul, I think you'd agree? I was completely blown away, Danny and I kept comparing what we were looking at with the plates in the FSC guide in an effort just to keep up with which was what!

After the unreal success of the water ditch we jumped back in the pick-up and headed into some woodland. Several new beetles for me here including the Staph Anotylus rugosus and the weevil Notaris acridulus. Lots of Carabus granulatus in rotten trunks including one scrum of at least 5 individuals! We saw a couple of beetle larvae with diagnostic twice forked tips to the 'tail'. These were Stenogustus rhombeus, a click beetle. Out on some nearby heathland I spied masses of Bog Myrtle and wondered if Orchestes iota would be present, I'd found it in similar habitat in the New Forest. Sure enough, after a lengthy bout of sweeping I netted one and happily walked across to where the others were kneeling over a tray. Graeme was muttering darkly about, "I'm sure that was iota, but it leapt and I've lost it". "What, like one of these?" I grinned, handing him my safely potted iota. Love it when that happens!

Back in the pick-up Bill whisked us away to another area of ditch bordered fields. He told us that Harvest Mice were present in some density along the edge, I headed off with Dan in tow determined to find one. I pretty soon found an unoccupied nest, inside of which the droppings had fungi growing across them. No idea of the species but I bet it's MASSIVELY under-recorded! Unfortunately nobody seemed willing to have a go with it, so it remained unrecorded. Graeme and Bill were heading back to the pick-up. Bill's magic spell was wearing off and we needed to get it back soon. Dan and I had fallen a bit behind trying to string a Common Frog into something more interesting. It WAS particularly heavily and attractively marked

But it was just a Common Frog (Rana temporaria). Shapwick does have some strange Marsh/Edible/Pool type frogs currently undergoing DNA analysis in an effort to formally name them. This didn't appear to be one of those though. Bill was waving us on, gesturing to hurry up. I decided to cut a corner and fell into the ground. Just like that, no warning! What the....??? Dan, a few steps behind me, pulled up short and started laughing. The bugger! "Dan, take my notebook and the net!" I cried as he tried to pull me out by my arm and nearly unbalanced me to the point where I was about to fall over backwards. "Hang on! Let me move my legs first!" Eventually I was out, but what a stinking, smelly hole I'd created. And it was all over my legs. Bill said something that I won't repeat here, but everybody else found it wildly amusing.... Anyway, here's the result of my amazing short-cut

You can't really tell from the pic, but that peaty gloop covers my legs in a layer over an inch thick. Bill wouldn't let me ride in the back of the pick-up. You don't even want to know what the backseat looked like by the time we made it back to the visitor centre. I found a hose in the yard and set to cleaning off the gloop. Then a quick change into my spare jeans (the spares I almost didn't pack - can you imagine!) and it was time to bid farewell to Gandalf, he'd been an amazing host and we were all very grateful for his kind offer to show us 'his patch' and some of it's wonderful beetles.

Thankyou Bill, you're one in a million mate.

Sorry 'bout the backseat 'n stuff.....