ID this lava please

[Vic Wintergreen]

Please identify this fella
I found him in my garden today
Seems just over 1" across

[Gerel]

Hi Vic

looks like a chafer beetle grub to me.

ATB
Steve

[Vic Wintergreen]

Thanks. Thought it might be. We occasionally get the chafers (cockchafers) coming up from the marsh. They had a habit of coming don the chimneys and looming up from behind the fire scaring the daylights out of the kids

[Dogghound]

Where abouts in the UK are you? Did you find it in soil or wood? The colour of the gut content suggests its a wood eating species.

[JRsbugs]

Hi Vic,

It does look like a Cock Chafer beetle grub to me, I have them in my 'lawn' and other places at times. The birds have a great time getting some when they come close to the surface, Starlings love them but I have seen Blackbirds with them too. I have dug out quite a few when digging new beds, they take up to 4 years or longer in colder climates to emerge, but in their final autumn-spring come near the surface in a semi0ready state. They do have dark patches in the 'body', from the soil I imagine ingested when feeding on roots.

Melolontha melolontha is the big one I have, it grows to 25-30mm long and larvae can reach 4-5cm! There's a smaller one, Melolontha hippocastani at 20-25mm which is more likely to lay it's eggs near trees, I have trees but I also have pics of the adult and mine are definitely big grubs. The difference is the tail end, as wiki states "long and slender in the common cockchafer, but shorter and knob-shaped at the end in the forest cockchafer".

Janet

[Dogghound]

The thing that makes me wary of it being from a cockchafer is the gut content is almost always dark due to their diet and they usually have more clearly defined spiricles. This oe has a pale gut content suggesting its been eating wood

[Vic Wintergreen]

Thanks for the replies
I live in North Kent, near the Swale, more specifically Milton Creek. It is quite a marshy area to the north.
I have recently been collecting fallen timber as I have gone back to an open fire. Some of the timber is very rotten, most is wild cherry though some has been pine and silver birch. The outer layer, beneath the bark, has rotted and is no good for burning, so I have been chipping this away and mulching the borders. I found the grub amongst a pile of clippings, so it could be from the timber, or previously resident. I hope this helps. I have buried the grub back in the ground.

[Dogghound]

As I thought , I believe this is Dorcus parallelipipedus a wood eater, In which case it would be better placed back with the wood.

[Vic Wintergreen]

When I say buried, I mean under the pile of rotten wood mulch, not in the earth. I hope thats cool

[JRsbugs]

You certainly do know your beetle larva dogghound. I had thought the gut was a little pale but I didn't know if they always had the dark gut content.

I have a pic of the Lesser Stag Beetle that I got this year, now I would know what to expect.

Janet