Just over a week ago I was outside one evening singing 'Happy Birthday' to my mum down the phone. Half way through I was interrupted by a huge male stag beetle flying low over the garden...
Just over a week ago I was outside one evening singing 'Happy Birthday' to my mum down the phone. Half way through I was interrupted by a huge male stag beetle flying low over the garden with a loud clockwork buzz. Fantastic.
It's hard to believe these impressive beasts can get airborne, until you realize that despite their huge size they only weigh about 5 grams. Compare that to a blue tit, with similar body size which weighs at least 10 grams.
A few days later there are two more. I'm not sure whether they are males or females, they are too far away, two or three gardens down the road, but nevertheless there is no mistaking them. They all appear at the same time, between 9.00 and 9.30 in the evening, just as the sun is going, but before it is gone. This is the usual time I see stag beetles flying, and how lucky I feel to use that word 'usual'. For me, stag beetles are a regular event, every year. But I wonder for how much longer.
Here in south-east London, stag beetles are garden insects. They also occur in Dulwich Woods, Beckenham Place Park, and a few other woodland places, but the ones flying past my back door are breeding in long-lost and forgotten subterranean root systems, buried logs and stumps no longer visible on the surface. But every year gardens are vanishing. Not only do they disappear under front drives, but many of the original 'backland' plots, extra large gardens and paddocks harking back to an era of horse-drawn carts and local orchards, are being developed under blocks of flats and tight mews or townhouse rows.
My one grain of hope lies in the beetle's wide palate. It is not just an oak, elm or beech feeder; it will take sycamore, birch, poplar and willow too. As I look out from the upstairs windows there are plenty of these trees still about. Maybe in 50 years time when my children are singing 'Happy Birthday' to me, the song will still be interrupted by the same loud buzzing.
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