Around this time of year , the garden is abuzz … not only with bees , butterfly stroke and hummingbird , but with the iridescent green , giant , take flight beetle jazz as fig beetles(Cotinis mutabilis ) .
The first time I ever dislodge into a fig mallet , literally , I really hear it before I saw it make out . It sound like a giant honey oil coming in for landing place , and as I twist my pass to look in its direction , one smacked me square in the head . It crash at my feet , momentarily stunned but wiggling frantically on its back before finding its foothold again and taking flight of steps — swerving through the air like it ’d had one too many tequilas .
figure beetle are amusingly awkward , and it ’s a wonder they ’re able to navigate at all . I ’ve seen them crash into walls , pole , trees and mass , but when they do make their quarry , they ’re nestled deeply in my figure tree diagram , sucking the succus out of an over - ripened , dripping common fig .
They do n’t just go for fig though ; they feed in on pollen , ambrosia , and flower flower petal , but their favourite are fruits . They ca n’t bite into hard , immature fruits but have intercourse soft , squishy , top-notch mature yield , especially those that have already been nibbled by shuttlecock .
Fig beetles are also telephone figeater beetles or green fruit beetles , and are find throughout summertime in the SW ( when the adults emerge from the larval stage ) . They seem strikingly similar to and are sometimes throw with June bug ( Cotinis nitida , seen in the southward ) and Japanese mallet ( Popillia japonica , native to Japan but brought to the east glide in the other 1900s ) .
I used to fear their appearance every summertime but now I count the days when the fig beetles intrude on my garden … I in reality depart a few of the rotting , dripping figs on my Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as a cakehole . unavoidably a fistful of fig beetles will land on the fig and stay there all day , feasting . When I find them , I knock them down one by one into a jarful — they ’re often too full or too stun to fly off .
But once they land inside the jar , they start buzz furiously , climb on top of each other and toss over themselves .
I think these two are trying to pace up to me …
I collect as many as I can get , then make my mode to the chicken coop where three very eager chickens head for the hills up to me , peculiar about the jar in my hand . I ’ll even shake it around a bit to tease them . ( Sounds beast , I know , but I ’ve hear of people tying cosmic string to Ficus carica beetle and fly them around like a kite , so this does n’t seem quite as sadistic . )
As soon as I take off the lid and drop the beetles to the reason , they ’re go faster than I can blink — into the snout of my very quenched chickens . I aver I ’ve even heard them purr in satisfaction !
