Gold bug

Yesterday The Man kindly left out a piece of watermelon for a butterfly that was hanging around and showing great interest in the honeysuckle, which is, of course, not blooming at the moment. However, the butterfly was not interested. Apparently butterflies do not like watermelon.

Somebody does, though. This morning as I left the house I saw that the watermelon had attracted a gold bug. It was a kanabun - a Japanese drone beetle.


We looked on the web to be certain of its identity, and found that it appears to like fruit. This is clearly a correct identification.

But we thought, briefly, that it might be a koganemushi (scarab beetle), and while I was searching for images I found this picture of a koganemushi which is rather amazing. If you cross your eyes slightly until you are seeing three pictures instead of two, and focus on the middle picture, the beetle will suddenly spring out of your computer in three dimensions.

This is probably very bad for your eyes, but I recommend it anyway.