AS a schoolboy obsessed with birds and butterflies, I never found the time or inspiration to investigate the third b—the beetles—until I came face to jaws with my first male stag beetle. I still recall what impressed me most. It wasn’t the size, although this formidable beetle was as big as a matchbox, nor the fierce antlers, but the fact that this extraordinary creature could fly, which it promptly did as soon as I got down to investigate it.
Suddenly, it flipped its front wings (its elytra) forward, revealing its improbable hind wings. They whirred into action and the beetle was off—a clumsier flying machine it was impossible to imagine.
In those distant days, it took a visit to the library to find out more. Lucanus cervus was, I discovered, the biggest of the 4,000 or so beetles to be found in these islands. Its lifecycle was as unlikely as the beetle itself, as the larva spends five or six years munching and boring its way through dead wood.
Hardly the most nutritious of food, so it’s no wonder the larva takes so long to mature. When it finally emerges as an adult, it has only a few weeks to mate and start the whole cycle again.
The ability to fly is something that most of the world’s beetles are capable of, although few spend much time in the air. Most are ground-dwellers, their adult lives spent rummaging around in stones or leaf litter. Others, presumably those that are good on the wing, are attracted to flowers: beetles are thought to be the original pollinators, first visiting flowers when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. According to one source, beetles are responsible for pollinating 88% of the 240,000 species of flowering plants around the world, a remarkable statistic.
Denne historien er fra October 30, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra October 30, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds