do you know this bug?

[nosferato]

looks creepy eek

[rustylady]

Looks like a cockchafer, also known as a Maybug, Junebug, or Julybug, depending on where you live. They are huge, horrible and almost impossible to squash. They have very hard wing cases, and fly about on summer evenings making a distinctive buzzing sound, especially near laburnum trees for some reason. They are attracted by house lights, and often find their way indoors. The larvae feed in the ground on grass and cereal roots.

[TPeers]

Yuck! Glad it's not in my garden!

[Hazel at the Hill]

Yuck! Glad it's not in my garden!

I saw one in the garden at the weekend - they are MASSIVE! It gave me quite a start, I can tell you!

[Alice]

But do they do any serious harm ?

[Flummery]

Only to grass. Give 'em room I say!

[iainhawk]

They can cause damage to a number of crops though- the adults are fond of plum trees where they can eat the buds and the leaves.

the females lay 100's of eggs in the soil and the grubs that hatch can much through roots- sometimes they just eat grass but they can also eat strawberry roots, potato roots and tubers, and fruit tree roots. They are in the soil for 3 years before the emerge as adults so if you move the soil, dig or change crops then you will not have any problems- hard winters kill them too.

They do prefer to live in woodland but this year has been a truely prolific year- but the good news is that laods of wildlife eat them- if you have bats about they love the adults- they catch them when they are flying to a food source in the evenings and if you sit out during the evening you can hear the bats crunch through the tough shells!
just about everything from frogs to foxes will eat them... so unless you find hundreds why not just share you plot of land with the wildlife that was there long before you were!

[HeyWayne]

But do they do any serious harm ?

Cockchafer sounds serious enough to me!!!

[moggssue]

Our (certainly my!) natural instinct in the garden seems to be to stamp out anything we don't like the look of. I agree with Ian, if it doesnt do any harm, surely there's no harm it being there - everything has its place and reason for being. MInd you, I haven't yet seen one of these in my own garden and am not sure I'd like to!

[nosferato]

i should of said.. this crawled out of an toyota aygo which we had just received from the Czech Republic ( i work up at toyota in the midlands) so i guess i was testing you all tee hee