There was a strange noise in the garden earlier and I finally managed to track it down to a wasp chewing bits off a hollow teasel stem. I took a video so you can hear how loud it was.
This was a fun mystery to solve. I was taking photos up in the woods and heard a fly buzzing manically as if it was trapped in a spider's web. I tracked it down to a bank of exposed clay where it was stuck face first down a hole that was clearly too small for it to get into. The fly's legs and wings were all free but it was stuck fast into the hole blocking the view of what was inside. I went back today to find the hole and see what lurked in there grabbing passing flies.
Fly stuck in the hole.
The empty hole the next day.
and the mystery occupant.
The last photo is all I could see of the creature and even blowing up the photo doesn't reveal any useful details. It looks very spidery so I wasted a lot of time trying to find a tunnel-dwelling spider species, but eventually I tracked it down as a Green Tiger beetle larva. Inside the tunnel is a long body with hooks holding it in place, and just the head and jaws stick out at the top. The head is perfectly round to fill the hole and it has all those little sensor hairs touching the soil to feel approaching footsteps. The white colour is where it uses soil like war paint to camouflage its face a bit.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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