An exploratory walk off the far end of Chestnut Avenue last weekend brought us down a trail of secondary abundance. The muddy track led through a barrage of arthropod colour, helping us forget the looming grey of a melancholy sky and dismiss the cold comfort of damp skin and dirty bites.
Sometimes it pays to look up and not just stare down. We spotted this inch-and-a-half long cerambycid on a tall shrub, where it stayed long enough to encourage an attempt to relocate it to a lower perch. The beetle protested audibly, emitting vigorous squeaks by rubbing a washboard-like structure behind the head against the edge of its pronotum.
Placed on a low frond, the beetle ceased its metallic din and allowed us to admire its handsome coat of shiny green and bold brick. Little did we know then that this beast is the bane of the albizzia trees that littered the forest edge and testify to the damage suffered by these woods since the days of Victorian beetle hunters.
A female by the modest mandibles and length of her head appendages, the longhorn had probably ventured out in hope of snaring the early bird's share of suitors. Mated, she will unleash a brood of more than a hundred in the fibre of young Fabaceaus trees. Her yellowish-green grubs will spend the bulk of their lives in boring darkness before emerging from the sapwood to spray the air with the scent of sexual desperation. For the imagoes have only a week or slightly more to court and copulate before their fire burns out and the light fades from worn bodies of once brilliant lustre.
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