Many of the beetles and bugs living here are extremely tiny and rarely ever noticed but we do have some quite large and spectacular ones to find as well.
The oil beetle
The oil beetle is one of the largest beetles in the UK and can be found wandering around some of our woodland paths and adjoining flower-rich parkland during spring and early summer. They get their name from a toxic oily substance they secrete from their leg joints to put off would-be predators.
They also have a fascinating, if rather gruesome, life-cycle. The female will dig a hole in the ground and lay up to 1,000 eggs. These hatch into small three-legged things called tringulins, which crawl up onto nearby plants and then attach themselves to mining bees. They then get taken back to the bees’ nest, where they feed on the bee eggs, before pupating and appearing as an adult oil beetle.