Eat your heart out Gerald Durrell or ....

"The Day of the Copulating Jewel Beetles",

(although that sounds like a headline for The Daily Mirror).

Just a walk, an amble, a quiet stroll through the fields. Yesterday I developed a massively swollen gland and keep falling asleep everywhere so decided to recuperate as best as possible ready for ...... the 1st of JUNE! No ironing, no washing floors, no running, no decorating, no cleaning cars - it's really hard to make myself sit down and ignore activities but I will be sensible.

So, back to the beetles. As I strolled I noticed the beautiful beetles settled on some dock leaves and took a closer look. Beautiful coppery, green, iridescent winged beetles. I noticed the larger females and each one had a smaller male clinging to her back - six pairs in all plus two left over males. Life just isn't fair. I saw them attempting to get a look in but they were too late.

Further down, I saw a largish black beetle on a dock and stooped over to see if it was a spider, but no ...... it was one of the jewel beetles (my name for them) but with such a large, black extended abdomen that she couldn't close her wings properly. I saw two of them like this and I think they were, or had just been, laying some eggs as there was a smallish (large to them) cluster of orange eggs on the leaf. Although I watched for a while I didn't see them actually laying any eggs.

There were some rather unpleasant looking beetle/come caterpillar/come grub things on a patch of dock leaves further down with six legs at the top end and a somewhat writhing tail end more like a grub. I think they'd been munching away at the dock leaves which were laced with holes. Lots of cuckoo spit as well but I didn't look to see if any frog-hoppers were about (I think that's who the eggs in cuckoo spit belong to).  Funny to imagine  cuckoos flying around and gobbing into the undergrowth.

Well, I think a visit to my naturalist book is required.

A nice little blog I found about these beetles.

Found a nice little hillock to sit and do the first part of Xi Jui Jin  followed by Ba Duan Jin from Shifu Yan Lei's DVD and book. It can only be good for helping me to get my energies back and fight off any bugs (not the ones I've been looking at).