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Nature

Summer Chafer

The summer chafer, Amphimallon solstitialis, is a hairy beetle:

I’d never heard of this species before, but I saw one on Wandsworth Common yesterday and looked it up. Not quite as exciting as its friends the cockchafer and rose chafer, but still one of the more interesting beetles I’ve seen in the UK.

Incidentally, Wikipedia tells me that the cockchafer, quite an amusing name in itself, is ‘colloquially called may bug, billy witch, or spang beetle’. Spang beetle is particularly fine.

» The picture is Hugo the Summer Chafer, posted to Flickr by HaPe_Gera and used under a CC attribution licence.

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