Meet the rotten fallen down tree on my farm. This colossal beauty came down last week. If you’re wondering, the middle has been taken out and moved because it’s inconveniently lying across a public footpath.
So I’ve just spent about two hours poking in the spongy wood and climbing this tree to discover what is living in it, was living in it and exploiting its current situation. Its biodiversity must be so rich that I definitely wasn’t going to find all of it today. But firstly, the age.
Originally this was impossible but after it was cut through the middle the opportunity became available. Counting them again and again I’ve come up with 180 rings. That’s 180 years old and so could have started growing in 1835. To put that in perspective, William IV was on the throne and that year Charles Darwin landed on the Galapagos Island on the HMS Beagle! This tree could tell a few stories, also hasn’t it seen the countryside and nature change?
Now what’s been using it? There’s evidence that birds have been making good use of the exposed grubs and bugs. But the first thing that was apparent was this:
Due to the size of the hole and the dry leaves stuffed in I think this is a squirrel dray. The hole it would have used is visible just above it. Moving now around the tree there was also a perfectly rounded hole which had definitely been created. From when it was standing I knew the woodpeckers loved it, so I’m guessing this is the outside to a once woodpecker nest. This is a fine example of how an old tree can hold large creatures, not just little.
Now I’m very aware that beetles love soft and rotten wood so I went prepared with collection pots. Admittedly the only beetles I collected were dead but I’m sure there is lots of living ones in it… somewhere.The tree was like a honeycomb; honestly it’s amazing it hasn’t come down earlier. Poking around with chunks of wood I disturbed a lot of hibernating ladybirds, all Harlequins I’m afraid. I’d been snapping sections of this chunk for ages, I turned the log back over and my heart jumped out of my skin. A bright yellow flash was the cause and two enormous wasps were sitting in one of the holes. I felt like I jumped a mile! After a lot of fun and collecting all the dead bits I went home to examine them. These are my findings:
Item 1 to 5 are my mystery beetle, 6 and 7 are heads maybe from the mystery bug and 8 and 9 are from a wasp. I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m going to make a bold identification here and say it’s a Lesser Stagbeetle. I’ve studied pictures and the way the wing cases are slightly rough and that the underside of the case (item 2) is chestnut brown, it’s just like the book says. I also found them in amongst the dead wood which is habitat they love. A slightly grim story is that beetle number one (headless) was still moving its legs very much to my mums’ dislike when I had it on her kitchen table (oops). I’m not sure for definite this is what it is but it would be awesome if it was.
So this is what is in my tree. I’m sure I’ve only just scratched the surface of what really lives inside but I didn’t half have a lot of fun. So if this isn’t a reason to leave dead wood standing, I don’t know what is.