Do you remember, when younger, how carefully you picked up a small creature on sheet of paper or card in order to deposit out of the window or in the garden?
Well, yesterday I saw two…err…grey haired ladies walking along the pavement studying something on a newly purchased magazine and in their turn being studied by a mother and her brood of youngsters. It was obvious to my trained eye that these ladies, both known to me as they live down our road, had found something interesting on the pavement.
Being me, I stuck my nose in. Not too close you understand but just over their shoulders. here, on the multi coloured cover of a copy of….. and being shileded by a ten pound note was a beautiful female Stag Beetle (Lucanu cervus) standing in that typical pose with her mandibles open and stock still.
Female Stag Beetle: Copyright Dan Tunstall Pedoe 2005
I was immediately transported back to my chidhood and our garden backing onto Blean Woods in Kent, U.K.
A wealth of wild life lived in the area of coppiced Chestnut behind our house. Violets, blue bells, wild strawberries, Willow herbs, slow worms, adders, night jars that churred away on summer nights and hawked for insects at dusk on their long slim wings. I never saw one sucking milk from a goat…but we didn’t have any goats…which mythical habit is where they get their other name of goatsucker.
There were huge piles of leaves and twigs with thousands of centimetre long woodants scurrying to and fro. Sometimes they carried their prey with them like this wasp
That's him done for.
A favourite trick was to pick the blue bells and lay them onto the wood ants nest where they would turn pink. My first interaction with a chemical Indicator. The Formic acid ejected by the ants reacted with the blue colouring in the Blue bells to turn it pink. I learned this trick when I saw an apparently pink bluebell growing out of an ant’s nest. The first time I took my bunch of pink blue bells home iwas immediately deflated by my know all mother who said, “Oh, you put them in an ant’s nest did you?” (and she used to call me Know All) That didn’t stop me trying the same trick with wild violets. I must say that I had limited success with them.
If you cook red cabbage and you live in a hard water area you may well see a similar thing happen. If you keep the red cabbage water and play with it by adding vinegar and then adding washing soda you should be able to change the colour of the water. I wonder if it works with beetroot water?
Many years later, at College, a friend (okay…. a girlfriend) gave me a copy of Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field by Eleanor Farjeon which she inscribed with a verse by Ogden Nash,
The ant hath made himself illustrious
By constant industry industrious.
So What!
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of Formic Acid?
from A. Chemist
Let’s get back to our lady stag beetle. She of the Short Sharp Mandibles.
I informed my neighbours as to the identity of the creature and reminded them that it is a protected species and that they should release it in a suitable place. Sooner said than done , but we managed to find some rotting logs for her to lay any eggs beside.
The two ladies wondered how I knew that it was a female of the species. I informed them that it was simple. Pointing out the short mandibles I explained that I had been given a nasty sharp nip by one as a child and have continued to have nasty nips from females ever since. Luckily they both had a sense of humour. The mandibles of the female stag beetle are indeed stronger than those of the male.
Here he is. In all his glory!
The males us their mandibles to tussle for territory and mates I believe. Not much different there then.
The larva of the beetle spends up to seven years feeding of rotten wood before metamorphosing into the magnificent creature that we see from time to time.
Stag beetle Larva. Copyright: Ashely Woods
I cannot help but wonder if these large juicy creatures make good eating. I suspect that Badgers might think so.
As I said, Stag Beetles are protected by law and are a lot more rare than in the past.
If you want to help these fantatstic animals the this link will tell you how…..Oh,and whilst looking for a suitable link I found out ...that the Roman’s ate the larvae!
From the Magpie's Nest 