Not many harriers about in Bowland I’m afraid to say but there were plenty of these around on the spring bank holiday 'In search of sky dancers' walk.
This is the sun loving green tiger beetle or Cincindela campestris, which tells you something about the weather we enjoyed on the walk!
I’d not seen one before coming to Bowland. Clearly I’d not been looking in the right places as they’re pretty common, you find them on dry sandy soils so they particularly like heath land and dry rocky land rover tracks such as the one up the Langden valley!
These beetles are neat, they are fearsome predators equipped with huge jaws for crushing their smaller invertebrate prey – even their larvae are ferocious, digging pitfall traps in the soil in order to trap their prey! I also love the fact that they are able to move so fast (they are one of our fastest insects) that they become unable to see, meaning that they either have to visually lock onto their prey then catch it in one swift attack or run in really short bursts, stopping to reorient themselves!
So don't forget to look down at your feet every so often when your out and about ... there are some pretty amazing creatures to be found at ground level as well as in the skies!