THE STAG BEETLE

Stag beetles are starting to emerge now, so you may be lucky enough to see one flying on a warm sunny evening – quite a sight to behold! 

These spectacular insects, one of the largest on the UK, desperately need our help. Numbers are in serious decline due to loss of habitat. They spend the majority of their lives underground as larva, up to seven years – only emerging to breed in the short time they live as the recognisable adults. The larva requires dead rotting wood underground to feed, so our current tendency to keep areas ‘neat and tidy’ deprives them of their essential habitat. As adults the stag beetles are harmless and do not feed – only one thing on their mind!

We can help them by creating a stumpery. A part buried pyramid made from logs and branches, that becomes rotting deadwood. As well as creating a very important habitat they can look pretty cool too and can be any size you wish. Whenever Wild Marlow does a volunteer conservation workparty, we make sure we create at least one stag beetle stumpery. One of our volunteers wrote a blog about it - https://www.wildmarlow.org.uk/blog_page.php?bid=52

A stumpery can be created at any time of year, so why not make a pledge for wildlife with our Much Wilder Marlow campaign, have fun building one and wait for the results – it’s not just stag beetles you will be helping 
https://www.wildmarlow.org.uk/wilder_marlow.php

The People Trust for Endangered Species is also asking for people to log their sightings, log piles and stumperies to help them understand current populations https://stagbeetles.ptes.org/...