Mystery beetles

We have had the same garden for over forty years, but it still has surprises for me. Recently I found a new beetle I’d never seen before, and saw it three times in one week.

The first two times it was in the rain gauge, not drowned but looked rather bedraggled. The third one was foraging in a broad bean plant in pristine condition.

After I picked it up, I could see that it had been on a an extra-flower nectary. In the broad beans these are the black spots, which contain nectar. This beetle discovered exactly where to get some nourishment! Spot on!

Surprisingly, it was the Mediterranean Spotted Chafer (Oxythyrae funesta). This flower chafer is about 10 mm long and has a black body covered in white spots. I’ve seen quite a few in Portugal before, but none in the UK. It seems to be establishing itself here, probably after being introduced via the horticultural trade from abroad, but more of that later.

Excited by this, I decided to have a look around in the Drury Rd allotment site. Lots of broad bean plants, quite a few bees and plenty of snails or signs of their voracious apetite, but not the new chafer.

I’ve also checked rhubarb flowers, a favourite of the Rose Chafer (Cetonia aurata), aka the allotment jewels. I found 2 of them, but not the new one, which is a close relative. Flower chafer adults forage on nectar and pollen, hence their name, and are good pollinators.

The larvae of both flower chafers develop in rotting organic matter, very beneficial. I have a feeling that, like the rose chafer, this one has a fondness for potting compost as well as compost heaps, etc. This would explain their scattered records in the UK. As I write, there are 26 records in iNaturalist, including two from me.

Then I saw another beetle, smaller, also swimming in shallow water in a bucket. It promptly walked away when I rescued it. But it turned out to be a dung beetle! Great surprise.

This is my first dung beetle on an allotment site for the last twenty six years! Unfortunately, I didn’t keep it; but it could either be the Common Horned Dung Beetle (Onthophagus similis) or the Metallic Horned Dung Beetle (O. coenobita). If the latter, there are 97 observations in inaturalist, mostly in the south of England and Wales, but including one in Colchester. It feeds on corpses and mushrooms in addition to dung, a rather varied diet. Travelling north?

Do keep an eye out for flower visitors and dung beetles! Nature is an endless source of surprises.