Wet wasp beetle

The weather remains cold and damp and the few insects that are about in the square metre looked hunched and miserable as they take shelter in the vegetation.

This evening in the top of the tall ragwort there was a scorpion fly and the wasp beetle, Clytus arietis, shown above. Notice the eye-like drop of water on its thorax. The larvae of the wasp beetle live in dead wood, usually of willow or birch, so it probably spent its early life in the birch log that straddles M3.