Waspish

Wasp Beetle (Clytus arietis)

While wandering out to the pond the other afternoon, I spotted this waspy looking insect on one of the old clothesline poles. That yellow and black pattern is certainly eye-catching! Once I'd snapped its picture, a check of the books quickly led to an ID. It's a Wasp Beetle (Clytus arietis), a common and widespread species in gardens and hedgerows across England and Wales (but rarer in Scotland) and a new one for the list. It's not just its striking pattern that makes this trickster look like a wasp; it also moves like one, waggling its long antennae and scuttling around on twitchy legs in the same jerky fashion that wasps do. That's enough to convince most potential predators to avoid it. In reality, however, this 1.6 cm-long beetle (just over a half inch) is totally harmless. It's one of the so-called "longhorn beetles". Like most other longhorns, its larvae develop in dead wood, including such things as fence posts and old gates. Adults feed on pollen, so this one was presumably finding plenty to eat at the flowers in our garden. They fly from May through July, so perhaps we'll see another one or two before they disappear for the season.