Let me introduce Lagria hirta, a lovely little beetle I’ve been seeing quite frequently in recent weeks – well, twice in one day and on about four other occasions, which is quite frequent in my book.
As you might guess from that hirta epithet (which comes from the Latin hirtus, meaning ‘rough haired’ or ‘shaggy’) and as you can hopefully see from my photos, this is one hairy beetle.
Though I’ve spotted all of my finds sitting on the leaves of trees and shrubs, the Naturespot website says the adults ‘feed on nectar and pollen on open-structured flowers such as Daisies or members of the Carrot family’ and their larvae ‘eat decaying plant material in leaf litter and turf’.
That website also gives the information that these beetles prefer to live in areas with sandy soils; though I live on the coast, I haven’t seen my specimens close to the beach, which is mostly pebbles not sand, and we have no sand dunes along this edge of the Bristol Channel, so I’m a bit puzzled by that habitat information. Interestingly, the species map on iRecord shows a spread of records throughout coastal and inland Britain, right up to the Scottish border, though excluding the Lake District, and then a grouping of records along the Moray coast east of Inverness.
