Scarabs, Garden, Wonders of Nature, Garden Bugs, Garden Critters

beetle I found laying upside down with legs flailing

Wonders of nature will never cease.  This has been a big bug week here at Shore Side Farm House. When walking outside Friday, I came upon a HUGE beetle. It looks like a scarab, the beetle motif made famous by Egyptian art and myth. If you look at my photographs, I tried to capture the scale of its size by photographing the bug next to my fingers. I have very large hands and fingers, so I am not sure it was an effective strategy to show the scale. I found this critter upside down in the middle of our hardscrabble lane, it was wounded and laying on its back flailing its legs. When I turned it over it started running. I had to photograph it, so I picked it up and brought it over to a park bench to take some shots. It proceeded to try to force itself through the slats in the bench. It was difficult to extricate it! I have no idea what kind of beetle it is, nor its name. I do know we have some honking grubs in our "grass",  I suspect this beetle might be the mature form of those grubs, but I don't know for sure. It is just speculation. Here is a few more shots of this creature.


 
















After photographing this beetle I released it into the garden.  The next day.......

The next morning I was out in the garden checking storm damage. I came upon an upside down beetle, shown below.

I thought for sure that it was the same HUGE beetle, photographed above.  I had released it yesterday and didn't know where it went, but I did know it was injured, so I didn't expect it had gone very far.  The beetle I found this morning was upside down with its legs to the sky, but the legs were not moving. Obviously it was dead.  I picked up the beetle and turned it over, finding that it had the same color scheme as the beetle from yesterday, but its head was distinctly different. The head had a pointed element, much like a helmet. Mr told me he thought it looked like those giant pincers could really impart some pain.

Beetle I found the next day...similar but different, possibly just the opposite sex? Note the giant points on the head.

 My guess is that it is the male of the same variety of beetle. I could not believe it!. I found it quite close to where I found the first one, but this one is sooo much larger, and quite dead.  Could it be mating season? Or maybe this is the bug whose grub I have found in the ground while gardening. I have found several and they are the biggest grubs I have ever seen. I once saw a bluebird sitting on a branch in a tree with one of these grubs.. The grub was sooo big that the Bluebird could not get a bite out of it. It was pretty funny.  

We really live far out here on the bay, the population is small, and civilization encroachment is even smaller. Nature comes into full bloom here. It seems these bugs are an example of that. I am including another large black bug/beetle I found here this week. These look like a '50s science fiction movie!

Further research has told me that the pointed head beetle is a Goliath Rhinoceros beetle of the scarab  family and the largest beetle on the east coast. I must say he was damn impressive.