Animals

Country diary: the lesser searcher is the greater discovery


I have travelled to open woodlands on the slopes above the southern banks of the River Spean to find a rare butterfly, but another creature steals the day.

In a rainy week the sun finally bursts through to warm the oaks, birches and glades, and the insects take to the air. Flies buzz between the rowan blossoms, the most striking being the white-banded peat hoverfly (Sericomyia lappona); my target, the wood’s best-known residents, the beautifully gold-and-chocolate-dappled chequered skipper butterflies, flit between the fragrant bog myrtle fronds.

There are 362 British ground beetle species. Most are small to medium, dark, dinghy-shaped insects found under stones and running over the ground. Some are metallic green and others prettily patterned; most are predators, although there are also specialist seed eaters.

While the glittering and dynamic tiger beetles are the celebrities of the group, for me the members of the Carabini tribe are the monarchs among the ground beetles. They are big and sturdy yet agile beetles between 1.5cm and 3.5cm long. Each of the 13 British species has a distinctive combination of sculptured patterning and colourful highlights. I have been enamoured with these animals since as a child I found my first violet ground beetle (Carabus violaceus) under a turned lump of chalk on the South Downs – the exquisite matt finish, finely edged with iridescent lustre, turquoise on the front parts and lilac around the wing-cases.

Tiger beetle



‘Tiger beetles are the celebrities of the group.’ Photograph: Alamy

These days none of the Carabini are commonly encountered in Britain. One, the Winstanley ground beetle (C convexus), is already extinct; another, the necklace ground beetle (C monilis), has disappeared from most of its lowland farmland habitats; while the biggest, the blue ground beetle (C intricatus), is pursued by nocturnal conservationists in western woodlands. A first encounter with any member of this tribe is a big moment.

Reposing on a leaning oak trunk is a 2cm-long beetle: broad-bodied and bronzed, it is instantly recognisable as the lesser searcher (Calosoma inquisitor), a very scarce animal that hunts caterpillars in oak canopies. Not quite the beetle of dreams that is its close relation, the enigmatic and metallic rainbow-decorated sycophant (Calosoma sycophanta), but nearly so.



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