Common malachite beetle

On one of our forays into of our invertebrate species list, we just noticed this: a common malachite beetle, Malachius bipustulatus.

You won’t find the adult beetles in the reserve until at least late March but their larvae are spending the winter in the sheltered, dark spaces under loose tree bark. They hunt small invertebrates: spiders, mites, slugs and their eggs, and the overwintering larvae of other insect species.

No amount of Googling yielded any pictures of a common malachite beetle larva, but UK Beetles describes it thus: …elongate and cylindrical with the thorax flattened, creamy to orange or bright red in colour with the head and the terminal abdominal segment dark…

The adult beetle is very distinctive; it is emerald green with twin red spots at the ends of its wing cases. It likes our lowland hay meadows and their boundaries and hunts among the vegetation. It is one of those predators that sits quietly among the flowers waiting for pollen and nectar feeders. We’ll try to find you one when spring arrives and take its picture,

Conservation status: Widespread and common