Unravelling a beetle mystery
There was the usual collection of wildlife under it, including a shiny black beetle.
Beetles are a nightmare for amateur naturalists. Of all known life-forms 25% are beetles, which is about 400,000 species. And the experts reckon that there are more than that number still waiting to be discovered, described and named. Scientists have divided this huge number of species into separate families, which helps a little. I studied my beetle. It had rounded, slightly flattened wing cases with fine grooves from front to back and there was a reddish tinge to its six legs. It was about 15mm long. I’d put it in the bucket where it but made no attempt to fly away. This made me think it might be flightless.
Most beetles can fly. We all know that ladybirds, which are beetles, have this rather disconcerting habit of opening their spotted wing cases, spreading out thin, gauzy wings and taking to the air.
I released my specimen from the bucket and went indoors to consult Google and my reference library. It was pretty clear that it came from the family ‘Carabidae’, commonly called ground beetles in English and often known as ‘clocks’ in Ireland. This narrowed the search, but only to a degree. 30,000 species of ground beetle have been described worldwide. But that was worldwide —- how many are found in Ireland? The answer is 211. Luckily, I then found an excellent website about the ground beetles of Ireland hosted by the National Museums of Northern Ireland. With its help I was able to convince myself that the beetle in my garden was Pterostichus madidus, a common Irish species which seems to have two English names, the black clock beetle and the common ground beetle. It comes in two colour variants —- one with reddish legs and the other with black ones.
But I had done the humane thing and released my beetle unhurt in the garden. Was this a wise move? I did a bit more research.
Pterostichus is largely a predatory insect. It mainly hunts at night and sleeps in a dark place during the day. It eats small slugs, worms and grubs. On balance this probably makes it beneficial in the garden. But a couple of sources also reported the more alarming news that this carnivore has a soft spot for ripe fruit, particularly strawberries.
Oh well, lots of things eat my strawberries, even though I grow them under cover in the greenhouse. And at least I’m now on first name terms with another small animal in my garden.
This common little bird is easy to recognise with its blue skull cap and yellow breast. Originally a woodland bird, particularly of oak-woods, the blue tit has adapted to living with humans and is a common visitor to peanut feeders and bird tables. Here it displays agility and intelligence when it comes to extracting nuts and large seeds with its slim beak, which is really designed for catching caterpillars, flies and spiders. It has also adapted to breeding in nest boxes and other man-made objects, including letter boxes, traffic lights, rainwater pipes and even the ash trays in pub smoking areas. Blue tits normally have only one brood a year but it’s a large one and the female will lay up to a dozen eggs. Breeding is timed to coincide with the appearance of large numbers of small caterpillars to feed the young. Sparrow hawks, in turn, delay their breeding so they can feed fledgling blue tits to their chicks.
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