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The recent wet
and windy weather has given me the chance for some
unusual 'armchair nature-watching'. We lit the open
fire and fuelled it with logs from the trees that have
fallen or been lopped. Out came this lesser stag
beetle which was spotted walking across the carpet.
The warmth must have woken it from its hideaway in a
log. Even in Cambridgeshire we are too far north for
the real stag beetle with its magnificent 'antlers'
and the lesser stag beetle is, well, lesser, but I
have been looking out for it. Its appearance in the
living room has saved a lot of bother.
The larvae of
the lesser stag beetle spend several years eating
rotting wood, then pupate and the emergent adults
spend the winter in the tree. I presume this had
got a rude and premature awakening
I have felt a
little guilty at burning the timber that has
accumulated in the garden because it could be the home
for some little-known but interesting wildlife,
especially a variety of beetles. The larvae of cobweb
beetles, for instance, live under bark where they eat
the husks of insects previously caught and sucked dry
by spiders. They have bristly bodies to protect
themselves from the spiders' jaws.
It is now
being recognised that dead wood, either in the heart
of ancient standing trees or in fallen logs, can
contribute to nearly one-third of the timber in
natural woodland and house a third of its species,
from owls, bats and woodpeckers to beetles, flies and
lichens. Nowadays, very little woodland is natural
and, even where trees are left long enough to die,
their timber is usually cleared away. This may be to
remove a reservoir of harmful species, such as
woodboring beetles, for firewood, for safety or just
to keep the place tidy. It is good to know that the
Forestry Commission now recognises the need to keep a
certain amount of dead wood in their forests.
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