The stag beetles came back. This is South London’s equivalent of the wildebeest migration across the Serengeti. Every year, with luck, at the end of May and beginning of June, the gardens of East Dulwich are abuzz with the whirr of stag beetle wings, as these magnificent beasts fly at dusk in search of mates and egg-laying sites.
As luck would have it, the beetles started to appear in the garden on June 18, two days before Ivydale Natural History Club’s regular Thursday meet, so I took them along. Obviously.
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- Comparing live with dead specimens.
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- Miss Reeves shows off the largest head louse ever to find its way into the school.
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- Not cuddly, but still cool.
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- Careful.
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- Cautious.
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- Wary.
Richard Jones
Bugman Jones 
Only just found your blog via Twitter. For what it’s worth, having seen the children with the Stag beetles, think it is wonderful work you are doing, and I hope the school authorities appreciated it. I only wish that when I was a little un I had, had the opportunity to see such bugs up close and handle them. Unfortunately, I was brought up by a grandmother, in house full of women who stamped on anything that moved, even the cat had to keep their wits about them! And, my gran, who I loved dearly had a strange sense of humour and would tell me the most frightening stories! Now being a grandfather, I think back and wonder what she hoped to achieve by telling me stories of babies being left outside in their prams, in the shade of an overhanging tree. Cut to the end of story…..baby continually crying eventually dies, autopsy shows skull full of Earwigs, from being left outside under tree. I promise she was a gorgeous lady and the best grandma….but sheesh…I wouldn’t tell any of my grandkids those kind of stories. Or about ‘spider licks’…don’t ask!
Anyway….what I was going to say was that I love your blog and, because of my childhood, I grew up hating bugs (especially earwigs and spiders) and it basically gave me a wasted bug watchers life. Now as at 71 and a keen nature photographer I have began to come to love the little critters even earwigs.
Thanks for a great blog.