Mark Gurney
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markgurn.bsky.social
Mark Gurney
@markgurn.bsky.social
440 followers 76 following 14 posts
I’m here for birds, insects, plants, and kind people. 🏳️‍🌈 he/him
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markgurn.bsky.social
From the paper, the four British species plus betulae, which might be here too. I've added the aedeagus from three specimens I have. My two from willows look like they might be crypticus. The one from hawthorn looks like to me like subaeneus, but the weevil is not metallic so must be oxyacanthae.
Illustrations of five identical looking small black weevils next to their dissected aedeagus. There are also illustrations of three dissected aedeagi, none of which is an exact match for the illustrations of the five species.
November 3, 2025 at 1:10 PM
markgurn.bsky.social
Exciting news: we have a new British flea weevil.
Less exciting news: it is a Rhamphus.

I still don't understand how to tell them all apart.

Even so, this is a very useful paper:

www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/16...

Six new Palaearctic species and a review of diagnostic characters. #coleoptera
A tiny black weevil with its head ticked under its head and large eyes on the top of the head. The antennae look like they come out in the front of the eyes. It is a Rhamphus flea weevil, but we do not know which species. They are cute but difficult.
November 3, 2025 at 1:10 PM
markgurn.bsky.social
Here are the females. I thought they might turn out rather drab, but I am fond of them, especially the neat grey Ruppell's and the rusty-winged Spectacled. #birdart #birds
Twelve warblers with rather long cocked tails and fiery red eyes, all facing left. The top row has Sardinian with a dark grey head, white throat, and brown underparts; Ruppell's which is mostly pastel grey with white edges to wing feathers; and Cyprus which is like a dingy version of Ruppell's with a few dark speckles on the underparts. The second row has the long-tailed species: Dartford with wine-red underparts and dark blue-grey upperparts; Balearic, which is mostly greyish, but slightly brown-tinged on the sides; and Marmora's, which is very like Balearic, but less brown and a slightly darker throat. The third row has three identical subalpine warblers, with grey heads, pale rose-pink underparts, and brownish backs. They look the same apart from the right hand one, Eastern Subalpine, which has very slightly longer wings. The bottom row has Spectacled Warbler, which is brown with a rusty wing panel and a white throat; Common Whitethroat, which like a large Spectacled Warbler with blacker centres to the wing-coverts; and Lesser Whitethroat, which has a grey head, darker ear-coverts, a cold brown back, and black legs.
March 23, 2025 at 4:31 PM
markgurn.bsky.social
Feisty little dudes. I'm almost used to calling them Curruca instead of Sylvia now. Scratchy songs, angry fire eyes, good colour schemes, but lose a point for being a bit too skulking = 8/10 #birdart #birds
An illustration of twelve warblers. Each row has three similar species. The top three are grey with black heads and varying amounts of black below; the next row has three with long tails, two are all grey, one is wine-red below; then there are the three subalpine warblers, which are grey above and red or orange below; and the bottom row has three with white throats and brown backs, two have rusty wing panels and the other is rather different with dark legs and a rather cold tone. The birds are all facing left and in the same pose so it is easier to compare the differences between them.
February 9, 2025 at 3:15 PM
markgurn.bsky.social
Delighted to see this in a Hypera drawer at the Natural History Museum today. In what seems to be a fit of exasperation, Richard Thompson asks a fundamental question of the universe. Almost forty years later we still don't have a satisfactory answer. #WeevilPhilosophy
A drawer of museum specimens of weevils. Above the species label for Hypera ononidis there is a hand-written label in red ink from Richard Thompson, a prolific weevil expert, dated 1987. The hand-written label says What is ononidis? The is is underlined.
December 19, 2024 at 9:43 PM