Tag Archives: British beetles

Glistening bronze and green

13 Saturday Jun 2026

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In Fauna Britannica, Stefan Buczacki explains that ‘“Chafer” is a Middle English word, perhaps meaning “to gnaw” and possibly related to the word “chaff” for the husks of grain’. The several species of chafer eat plants, in particular the roots of plants, so they can be serious pests, of crops and, in the case of the species shown here, the Garden chafer (Phyllopertha horticola), of the plants in your garden. Various species of bird have also learnt that chafer larvae are nutritious, so they can cause damage to lawns and turf when poking about trying to find them.

As I seldom see chafers and don’t have a garden, I was nothing but delighted when I spotted not one but two Garden chafers, their metallic green and bronze colours glistening in the sunshine, in a Cardiff park. As these were quite hairy, I believe that means they had very recently emerged from their pupae; the hairs rub off as they age. The two I found were both in a wild area, of scrub and trees and overgrown Bramble bushes, but chafers are good, if bumbling fliers, so they did have the potential to cause damage to local gardens. Sorry, gardeners!

More Green tigers

01 Friday May 2026

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Almost two years ago I found the first Green tiger beetle (Cicindela campestris) to be recorded at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park (see A Surprising beetle find, May 2024), and I’ve been looking on and off since then for any more.

Ten days ago, on 21 April, I finally spotted another one, and then the very next day I found two more. Of course, this means there must have been more back in 2024, at least one male and one female, for this species still to be present at Cosmeston, and not just a one-off anomaly.

I shall continue checking the location where I found these, an area where a lot of loose limestone fragments and spoil from the adjacent former quarry was dumped when the park was first created in the 1970s. Though plants have colonised the area, much of the rock remains exposed; this holds the sun’s warmth well, which these insects seem to like.

Having seen these beetles again, and spent time watching them, I’ve become more familiar with their way of moving, which helps with spotting them. They’re almost impossible to see when still but move away when I walk the paths through the area. If you didn’t know them, you might think they were large flies, as they fly a short distance, scuttle, then stay very still. Green tiger beetles are active in the spring and summer so fingers crossed I find some more in the weeks to come.

Lily beetle

08 Wednesday Apr 2026

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When you’re a bright red beetle, you’re probably trying to convince any potential predators that you taste so foul you’re not worth eating but it also means that it’s hard to hide from inquisitive humans, like me, especially when you’re sitting in plain sight on Alexanders flowers.

The gardeners amongst my readers may recognise this beetle and, if you grow lilies, you may have seen a beetle like this nibbling on the leaves of your lilies, hence its name: Lily beetle. The Naturespot website calls this insect Scarlet lily beetle but, when I recorded it, the insect’s name came up simply as Lily beetle (Lilioceris lilii).

As I don’t have a garden and don’t often visit ornamental gardens, the Lily beetle shown here was only my second ever sighting of this vibrant beetle in ten years of staring at plants. This is not particularly surprising though, as I’ve just been reading that this species only came to Britain in the early 1900s, presumably imported on lily plants, but, in the century since, it has managed to spread throughout Britain. That’s an impressive achievement for a beetle that’s only 10mm long.

Bloody-nosed beetle

06 Monday Apr 2026

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When I spotted this little character pottering slowly across a path along the top of King Barrow Quarry on Portland, it was just over ten years since I had seen my first Bloody-nosed beetle (Timarcha tenebricosa); I wrote about that in The blood spewer, February 2016.

And I’d only seen them once in the intervening years, when I saw both an adult beetle and a larva (Botanising, with insects, May 2017).

So, it was a particular treat when I saw this handsome beetle, though it wasn’t easy to get a close look at or to take photos to show you all. This was a beetle on a mission, stumbling a little as it is made its way across small tufts of grass and lumps of sun-baked mud but always persevering, as if it had an urgent appointment and it was late. Or, perhaps, this is just how Bloody-nosed beetles live their lives, with focus and intention, ever onwards.

Beetle: Athous bicolor

16 Monday Feb 2026

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This is the last of my new invertebrate finds from 2025, and it may or may not be the beetle Athous bicolor, found in shrubs around the edge of a local recreation field last July.

My specimen appears to have the features described on the Naturespot website – ‘quite an elongated species’, ‘elytra are brown in colour with ridges and pits running down their length’, ‘pronotum is slightly darker’, ‘legs and antennae are unicolourous with the rest of the insect and the antennae are very long’ – but their identification difficulty indicator is red, meaning the features are not as clear as the description indicates and/or there are other very similar species.

Still, it was an interesting beetle to find and photograph. This species is generally found in grassy, shrubby areas, sometimes feeding on umbellifer flowers or just sitting in the sun on long grass stems. Good luck if you find one and want to identify it!

Rosemary beetle larvae

15 Thursday Jan 2026

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Normally, I would be quietly cursing the inefficiencies of the rail system when I am forced to wait an extra 20 minutes due to my scheduled train being cancelled, as happened to me yesterday morning, but, trying to be positive, I decided to have a poke around the station’s plants. I should perhaps clarify that this is not one of those stations where volunteers plant up gorgeous flowering displays in planters and hanging baskets – far from it. There are two planter boxes with small shrubs that get hacked with something resembling an electric hedge trimmer every couple of years, and a tiny embankment under trees that must once have had wildflower seeds sprinkled on it but is now quite wild and unkempt.

I focused on the planter boxes and almost immediately noticed that something had been nibbling on the leaves of the Rosemary bushes in each of the planters.

I wasn’t that hopeful of finding anything but bent in for a closer look at the damaged areas, and bingo! Despite the temperature hovering around 4ºC, the little creature above was happily munching its way down the side of one of the leaves. And then I found a second one, the little grub shown below.

It turns out that I had just found my first larvae of the Rosemary beetle (Chrysolina americana), a beetle that arrived in Britain from Europe in the 1990s and is rapidly spreading out from its original landing point in the south east of England. Gardeners are probably not very happy about this, as the beetle will also do damage to other plant species – Lavender, Sage, Thyme – as well as the Rosemary for which it is named, but the adult beetle is very attractive, so I’m looking forward to checking these planters for them later in the year.

First beetles

13 Tuesday Jan 2026

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Though I’ve mostly been focusing on finding new bird species during this first couple of weeks of 2026, I have also, when the sun has been shining, been keeping an eye out for any bugs or beetles that might have emerged briefly to bask in its relative warmth. So far, that has proved fruitless, and my first beetle sightings of the new year have actually been here at home, in my flat – in fact, as I type this I can see one of them walking along one of the living room blinds. They are ladybirds – all have been Harlequin ladybirds (Harmonia axyridis) – that came flooding in through my open windows just as the winter days began to get colder.

This is quite normal – ladybirds look for places to sleep away the wintery weather. I don’t mind them doing this in my flat apart from one issue; during those blue-sky days when the sun is out all day, my south-facing flat gets quite warm and the ladybirds wake up and start wandering about, looking for a way to get outside again. I have ejected five that seemed particularly agitated, flying in to the glass again and again, but there are at least two still lurking on the blinds or amongst my house plants.

B is for bugs and beetles

07 Sunday Dec 2025

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One of my wildlife aims this year has been to try to find as many new species, of all kinds, as possible, and I’ve been extremely lucky to have found many new-to-me bugs and beetles. These include Lesser thorn-tipped longhorn beetle, 4 January; My first Pine ladybird, 10 March; My first Eyed ladybird, 22 April; Fine streaked bugkins, 26 April; Cyllecoris histrionius, adult and nymph, 12 May; Cantharis decipiens, 13 May; Cacopsylla ambigua, 29 May; Rhopalus subrufus, 6 June; Rhabdomiris striatellus, 10 June; Bug: Deraeocoris flavilinea, 28 June; Beetle: Grammoptera ruficornis, 30 July; Beetle: Four-banded longhorn, 2 August; and Bug: Megacoelum infusum, 12 September.

I was particularly chuffed to find my first Juniper shieldbugs (Juniper shieldbug, 3 June) and, now that I know to look for them on some other tree species, I’ve managed to find them on four separate occasions, three of those in the same location as my initial find, on a Cypress growing in a local park, and the other on a different Cypress species growing in one of Cardiff’s oldest cemeteries, alongside Llandaff Cathedral.

Another new bug that I think is particularly attractive is Bug: Kleidocerys resedae. I wrote about that on 27 June, and this is another species that I’ve managed to re-find, on 15 November, when I spotted three different adult bugs within a few metres of each other.

Beetle: Four-banded longhorn

02 Saturday Aug 2025

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This is my second recent new longhorn beetle find, Leptura quadrifasciata, also known as the Four-banded longhorn – the reason for that name will be immediately obvious, I’m sure.

Interestingly, these beetles are associated with old woodland, though I found this one feeding on a Wild carrot flower (they feed on umbellifers) on the edge of Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park, a former landfill site. The nearest old woodland would probably be about a mile away in a direct line, quite a long flight for a beetle.

At first glance, Leptura quadrifasciata looks quite similar to the other yellow-and-black longhorn beetle, the Spotted longhorn Rutpela maculata, but the four bands on the former’s abdomen are quite regular and precise whereas the markings on the latter are more random and splotchy. My immediate impression of Leptura quadrifasciata was of a darker-looking beetle than Rutpela maculata, which always looks quite bright to my eye, and that’s actually what made me look closer; one of my ‘Oh, what are you?’ moments!

Beetle: Grammoptera ruficornis

30 Wednesday Jul 2025

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This is one of two new longhorn beetles I’ve found recently, not because I was specifically searching for them, just pure happenstance. (The second species will appear here on Saturday.)

This first is quite small for a longhorn beetle, is a dull brown and has wing cases covered in silken hairs, which, as you can see, make it look quite shiny. Adult longhorn beetles feed on the pollen and nectar of flowers, in the case of Grammoptera ruficornis, the flowers of Hogweed and Hawthorn in particular. The Naturespot website entry for this beetle warns that there are three similar-looking longhorns but, fortunately, the other two species are rarely seen and there are particular features of their antennae that can be used to separate the species.