This monster flew into the path of our barbeque a couple of weekends ago. Here he is, positioning himself nicely to go on the spit roast.
We were in an area of South West London where sightings of stag beetles aren’t that infrequent. Apparently there was a tract of ancient woodland nearby and as we all know stag beetles particularly like their ancient bits of decayed wood.
I reported the siting on the the “What’s in my back yard” WIMBY Tool and then headed over to the The Stag Beetle Project to see if there was anything I could do to encourage the big monsters on to my plot.
The advice seems to focus on:
- building a loggery of discarded hardwood somewhere on the plot
- checking ponds for floundering bugs around their flying season, May – June
According to the WIMBY tool, there have been no recorded sitings of stag beetles around my allotment site since 1998!
I better start collecting logs now.
2 responses so far ↓
1 islandgardener // Jun 28, 2009 at 1:42 pm
These are so huge…I don’t think I have ever seen one before!
2 allotment blogger // Jun 29, 2009 at 11:38 am
Wow, lucky you! We’ve had a loggery for three years but never seen a stag beetle. Did you know that they live for about three to five years as a grub but only three months as an adult?
An allotment holder reported stag beetles on our site around three years ago but nobody has seen any since then. Fingers crossed the grubs will emerge this year …
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