An Oswestry Monster!

Three Wrekin Forest Volunteers (Liz, Keith and me) had an excellent day with Pete Boardman around Oswestry searching for Shieldbugs today.

Alan, Jim, Ian and Sue also joined us.

We found a monster beetle, which I'm guessing not many people reading this would have ever seen - certainly not as large a specimen as this one but before I show you this fabulous beast let me tell you we also had 5 species of shieldbugs:

Green
Gorse
Forget-me-knot
Hawthorn
Sloe

Plus: Drinker Moth Larva

and a Common Footman larva

But have you ever seen anything quite as spectacular as this in the beetle world? None of us there today had! What an amazing creature. 

Found at Oswestry Hillfort, we knew pretty soon that it was an Oil Beetle but it wasn't until Pete had managed to get a decent 3G connection on his phone that we were able to positively ID it - with the help of  buglife.org.uk - we nailed it to species: The Violet Oil Beetle Meloe violaceus

They are apparently hugely variant in size but this has to be right at the top of its range. As adults they gorge themselves on celandine and soft grasses. The Buglife website states 'their abdomen becomes distended and can extend some way beyond the tip of their wings' I reckon that's an understatement with this particular one - its wings are tiny in comparison to its body.

Just to give it some scale here it is seen crawling out of a 60mm diam pot and then sitting on my hand. This thing is 35mm in length and 10mm wide. Now that's a BIG BUG!

And who found it? If you're familiar with the names of the attendees mentioned at the start of this post who would you select? You got it - it was none other than Liz again! So well done for a fabulous find Liz. Keep 'em coming!

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