The hotel here has a staff house situated a few hundred feet from the main building. It's not necessarily the most spotlessly clean house in Britain, but it's hardly a slum either. There's a small downstairs loo and it was here that I discovered a population of Niptus hololeucus wandering along a short length of kickplate beneath the sink unit. I think four is the most I've ever seen at one time, more often just one or two are visible. I've looked for them four times so far this year without success, I was starting to worry that they'd died out. Happily, I found one this morning.
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| They really like wandering along the silicon seal I put down between the kickplate and the lino |
These are small beetles, just 3 or 4mm in length, and quite slow moving. They don't appear to be particularly agile, in fact they seem completely unable to right themselves if flipped onto their back. They often spend periods of time completely inactive, sitting with legs pulled in and looking for all the world like a crumb of debris, though this is probably just a reaction to my switching on the light in an otherwise entirely dark place. Sometimes they slowly shuffle back and forth, almost a rocking motion in fact, without moving anywhere. Just slowly rocking/shuffling/rocking/shuffling. Really quite bizarre, I have no idea why they do this.
Twice I've found one climbing the doorframe, both times approximately two feet above the floor. Otherwise they seem to restrict themselves to a three foot length of kickplate, very occasionally I've found them maybe ten inches from the edge, just sat there out in the open looking puzzled and lost.
I managed a couple of pretty poor video clips of today's individual wandering along the mastic bead. This is very much zoomed-in and hence the quality is pretty poor. If you look closely you should be able to see the raised "hairs" covering the elytra. The background noise is the overhead extractor fan, not much I can do about that, sorry.
The head is held facing downwards and slightly rearwards, in essence the beetle can't see where it's going. Note how the antennae are put to good use, much as a blind person would tap ahead with a cane. I love these beetles, they have such great character!
Here's the 'habitat shot', ha!
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| The strip of lino beneath the sink unit is the spot for Niptus |
I no longer live in this staff house, I'm annexed onto the hotel itself now. The current residents of the staff house show no interest in spraying, bleaching or mopping this downstairs loo. So it looks as though Niptus will have a home for a while to come. I must remember to scatter a few biscuit or cereal crumbs in there from time to time...
(It's probably best not to let my boss or the housemates know about this - are we agreed chaps?)
