Linda Birkin

Three realistic fake insect larvae on a white background. A brown dragonfly nymph, a green (glittery) diving beetle larvae, and a stonefly nymph.

The fake dragonfly nymph next to a real shed skin (missing a few legs), to show how good a model it is.

Close up of the stonefly larvae. A brown slightly flattened insect.

Close up of the diving beetle larvae. This one is very realistic in shape, but is cast in transparent green silicone with glitter.

Extremely pleased with this new weird addition to my ento #scicomm kit. Realistic aquatic insect larvae - silicone fishing lures! Gonna make 'em little magnifying pots or petri dishes.

(Company is called FishUp)

(I am delighted)
(They smell odd, presumably to be delicious for fish)

A blank and white cat curled up on green bedding with colourful beetle prints.

A round cat on freshly duvet'd bed.

M: "Which slides are you taking along this weekend?"
Me: "Minibeast Mythbusting. There's plenty of variety, and it's a family event."
M: "Didn't you have a weird bug history one?"
Me: "....yes, but it involves biochemical warfare / crimes; animal trials; & 4 Horsemen: Bug Edition."

A Normal Career.

photos from an excellent study by Cohen et al (2021) of a cerambycid beetle just straight up doing it with the flower of Disa forficaria, in a classic example of a ~sexual mimicry pollination system~

the humiliation of going on a hot date then finding out she wasn't even in the same PHYLUM (then someone writes a whole paper about it, with photos of your wiener)

Timely — just saw this post yesterday. Haven’t explored it yet myself, but it looks promising! bsky.app/profile/sara...

Macro photo of a brown stink bug in face view on a leaf, guarding a tightly-clustered bunch of eggs that are shaped and colored exactly like a full tray of dark beer with foam on top.

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

Pyramid is fungus?
(what in the WH40K is this 😆)

Oh dear. Making an 'Identify Your Minibeast!' flow chart (cos I want a BIG one for kids to follow through on sites), and it's all gone very GrApH1C De5IGn Is My PAssiON 😅

Make and try out the draft version, Linda. Then get someone with art skills beyond Powerpoint Fiddlin' to make it nice...

Green metallic insect hiding inside a drilled hole in a wooden block.

Shieldbug chillin' out in a part-used #beehotel tube. (Birch shieldbug? I think.)
A creature actually using a bee hotel as a *hotel*?! :P

At the 'Women in Warhammer' meetup at Warhammer world.
Have immediately spent 20 solid minutes talking about How Bees Work 😅

Continues my traditional of discussing entomology at Warhammer events, and Warhammer at the @royentsoc.bsky.social conference 🐝🪰🕷

It is agonnnnnnny D:

Oh, cool!

Scandalous! 🍿

6 bad doodles with text under each one. horseshoe crab is literally the animal horseshoe crab. shoehorse crab is a crab riding a shoe, cowboy style. crabshoe horse is a horse wearing literal crabs as shoes. shoecrab horse is a horse telling a crab to go away. crabhorse shoe is a pair of shoes, left one crab shaped, right one horse shaped. horsecrab shoe is literally the same pair of shoes, flipped.

#InvertebrateShitposting as per @joabaldwin.com's request

Dragonfly Nymph Soft Plastic Injection Mold This single cavity injection mold mimics the appearance of a Dragonfly Nymph, and is ideal for freshwater fish like Bass and Trout. It's designed specifically to be 3D printed in Resin, and injection ...

You can also buy 3D printing molds that will let you injection mold your own fake nymphs, but they're not from the same company and are not as good. If I had a 3d printer that could do food safe resin though, I would ABSOLUTELY be getting these.
cults3d.com/en/3d-model/...

Today's 'I'm not sure how I ended up here, but that's cool / useful' - discovering you can buy really realistic dragonfly / stonefly nymphs for flyfishing. Have ordered some to see if they'll work for outreach.
Expect my google recs to be Fishy for a while...
(fishuplures.com/en/products/)

I think it is liveness check (had to do one for a DBS check recently); it's such an oddly ominous term! 'Checking you're not using a wax model of someone else's face' is probably a bit long.

Title: A Valentine’s Day experiment In an effort to test the efficacy of cupids arrows of desire. A placebo group is shot with regular arrows. Their injuries range from moderate to sever. Unexpectedly, romances struck up in hospital and lawyers’ waiting rooms create a "romance ratio" similar to that of magic arrows. However, once the cost of compensation claims is factored in, it is decided to discontinue.

A Valentine’s Day cartoon for @newscientist.com

Why use iRecord for wildlife sightings? 🐞

Built for the UK, it links records to national schemes, LERCs & the NBN Atlas—so your data supports real conservation & research.

New or rusty? Join our iRecord 101 online course on 2 Apr.

Sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1734876575...

@ukceh.bsky.social

Winter active bumblebees - Bumblebee Conservation Trust Since the 1990s, naturalists have noticed that, rather than hibernating, some bumblebees have been active all winter.

Winter active bumblebees info: www.bumblebeeconservation.org/winter-activ...

I've popped the record into iRecord.

A slightly blurry bumblebee visiting a bright pink camelia flower, against a very blue sky.

Two ladybirds next to each other in the groove of a wooden post. The larger is a cream streaked ladybird, the smaller is a two spot ladybird.

A rare sunny day in Nottingham today, and some bugs were about! First bumblebee of the year (a surpisingly early one, though B.terrestris is known to be winter active; I used to see them quite a lot in London). 2 ladybirds chillin' on a post in Wollo Park in the sunshine.

Slightly mental Powerpoint shenanigans >>>>> AI

Computer restarts overnight. Damn, I need to sort through those references / pages I looked through for text, make sure I got everything.
Well at least there's an option to reopen closed tabs.
"YOU ARE ABOUT TO OPEN 133 TABS, DO YOU WANT TO CONTINUE."

...ffs, me.

Knocking back vitamin D pills with an energy drink. It's January in England, baybee.

Oh ffs

Self-employed workers and personal employees can now apply for Enhanced DBS checks From 21 January 2026, self-employed people and personal employees can apply for Enhanced and Enhanced with Barred List(s) DBS checks through an Umbrella Body.

Useful Things I Learned This Week: The DBS check rules have changed so that if you're self-employed, you can invoke Enhanced checks on yourself. Useful!

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Bee… or not a bee? 🐝🪰

Meet the Dark-edged Bee-fly. Discover how to spot UK bee-flies and learn about their remarkable (and surprising) life histories in our entoLEARN webinar, on 25 Mar 2026. 🌍 🧪

👉 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1976745510...

@uk-soldierflies.bsky.social @tonymadgwick.bsky.social

Well, shit.

A rectangular enamel pin with two hinges on the left hand side. It looks like a book and has a picture of a tree on the front. The book is titled: Trees, a miniature guidebook. An open version of the pin shows assorted leaf shapes on the pages of the book. The leaves are labelled by species as oak, horse chestnut, sycamore, hawthorn, ash, alder, hazel, holly, lime, beech, and birch

My miniature tree identification pins are finally back in stock and the 2nd edition is better than ever! Please share them around so people can see 💚 canopyrobin.etsy.com/listing/4386...

There are so many more serious reasons for this, but I keep fighting my phone offering to 'enhance' nature photos. It's for iNaturalist, you frustrating flat robot, I don't want you hallucinating different legs.