Common Red Soldier Beetle
Rhagonycha fulva
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Orange-red with black wing tips, and almost always found in pairs on a hogweed head.
A slim, soft-bodied beetle, orange-red with distinctly black tips to the wing cases. It swarms in high summer on umbellifers — hogweed, cow parsley, angelica — along verges, hedgerows and rough ground around Dumfries, often in considerable numbers. It is entirely harmless, and its old nickname reflects how often it is seen mating in the open.
Behaviour
Adults are predators of small insects taken on flower heads, and also feed on pollen and nectar, so they are useful pollinators as well. The peak is short — a few weeks in July — and pairs are conspicuous on umbellifer flowers throughout it. The larvae are quite different: dark, velvety and predatory, living in soil and leaf litter through the winter, eating slugs and other soil invertebrates.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Soldier beetles (Cantharidae)
- Size
- 8–10 mm
- Status
- Native; abundant in high summer
Photo by IES MANUEL GARCÍA BARROS A ESTRADA- PONTEVEDRA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons