Here
is the sixth of our November Novenas for the Fallen Through, which
for this month are devoted to Saint Cuthbert and to a call for
protection for our wild kinfolk. If you would like to read more about
this month’s novena you can read our first prayer here.
We
have already lifted prayers for our badgers, our hedgehogs, and for
the street trees of Sheffield, for otter, cormorant, and seal, and
for sharks and orcas, all of whom I’m sure would have been familiar
to St Cuthbert who spent so much time with the sea. Today, we turn
away from the water and the wild edge of things to a quite
spectacular antlered being whose greatest UK stronghold is in South
and West London; the stag beetle. As Cuddy first appeared to me with
antlers in a dream I think that he might quite like them!
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| Male stag beetle, Suffolk Wildlife Trust |
The
stag beetle, also known as a horse pincher, thunder beetle, and oak
ox, is the largest beetle in the UK and is protected under the
Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, together with being classified as
a Priority Species in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Its larvae
depend on old trees and rotting wood to live and feed on and their
favourite habitat is oak woodland, but they can also be found in
gardens, parks, and hedgerows. The majority of their lifespan is
spent as larvae, which can take between three to seven years to
develop before they pupate and transform into adults. In contrast to
this long, slow journey, the adults emerge in May with the sole
purpose of mating and die in August once eggs have been laid. I can’t
help now thinking of the adults as fireworks. All that time in the
dark heart of the wood and then a brief whooosh before falling back
to earth!
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| Stag beetle larva, Daily Mail |
We
are most likely to see stag beetles when the beautifully
burnished~chestnut males fly on warm summer evenings in search of a
mate, or perhaps when they are gathering strength by basking in the
sunshine during long summer days. Once they find a female they
display their antler-like jaws to her and then use them to fend off
rival males, in much the same way that deer stags would do. I love
that the ‘way of the deer’ is being played out in layer after
layer of life. I was also delighted to find that many of the common
names for stag beetles around the world relate to deer. To name a
few, in Belgium they are called ‘grande biche’, or ‘great doe’,
in Norway they are ‘eikhjort’, or ‘oak deer’, in France they
are ‘cerf-volant’, and in Italy ‘cervo-volante’, both
translated as ‘flying deer’, in Bosnia they are ‘jelenjak’
and in Macedonia, ‘Elenche’, both meaning ‘little deer’. I am
sure that antlered St Elen is watching over these little beetles,
just as she does her reindeer and deer.
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| Stag beetle male & female by Ross Bower for PTES |
Interestingly,
in Germany, and to some extent in England, they seem to be more often
linked with fire, revealing what may be some of their oldest names;
‘feuerschröter’, or
‘fire thresher’, ‘hausbrenner’, or ‘house burner’
(relating to the old superstition that stag beetles came to fires in
order to take some to burn down houses), feueranzünder,
or ‘fire lighter’, and ‘donnerpuppe’, or ‘thunder puppet’,
from the belief that stag beetles were the holy animals of the God of
Thunder. These beliefs are also found in England, where it was once
said that they could summon lightning or carry a burning coal in
their jaws to ‘do the Devil’s work’. I am not so sure about
that, remembering that so many holy animals are later demonised, but
I am sure that St Cuthbert, who was also known as the ‘Fire of the
North’ might have felt much kinship with these small beings. I
myself was delighted to find that one of their names in Kent where I
live is ‘cherry-eater’!
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| Image: PTES |
As
I mentioned above, South and West London provide a vital refuge for
our threatened stag beetles. They can also be found elsewhere in
southern England, in the Severn Valley, and in coastal areas of the
southwest. Elsewhere in Britain they are extremely rare or even
extinct. There are several threats to their survival. The rarely seen
female stag beetles prefer light soils where they can more easily dig
down and lay their eggs. Their larvae spend most of their life below
ground, often at depths of up to half a meter. When they emerge as
adults they need to be in an environment that allows them to dig
their way to the surface. Aside from this they prefer warm areas with
low rainfall, and so rain-increasing climate change may prove a
challenge for our small stags, with very dry weather adversely
affecting the survival of larvae. Their food sources are also
becoming harder to find. Female beetles are able to fly but spend
most of their lives walking about on the ground until they have
mated, which is when they attempt to return to their own birthing
ground. If there is enough food there she will then lay her eggs
underground in rotting wood, such as log piles, tree stumps, and old
fenceposts. The larvae feed on this decaying wood below ground, but
it is becoming scarce as many of us become more and more obsessed
with having tidy gardens. The adults are unable to eat solid food and
rely on fat reserves built up during their larval stage. They are
though partial to sipping sap and fallen soft fruit. One of my
favourite places in Glastonbury is the Abbey Orchard, where the fruit
is often left to fall and rot. I find that process beautiful but
remember taking a friend there expecting him to find it beautiful
too. Instead, he bemoaned the ‘waste’ of the uncollected apples,
found it an ugly, uncared for place. It is a sad world indeed where
we see the worth of something only when it is obviously useful to, or
wanted by, ourselves. It would be a blessing to the earth indeed if
we could shift our way of thinking to see grace in allowing the
falling and return of the standing people and their fruits which are
of such value to the wild web of life. I very much doubt that those
rotting apples were wasted and I’m sure that stag beetles would
have loved them.
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| Fallen apples, Jacqueline Durban, August 2017 |
Stag
beetles are also under threat from predation by cats, foxes, crows,
and kestrels, who are able to kill them when they are vulnerable
above ground in their adult stage. But the most significant risk to
their survival is from habitat loss. Many of Britain’s woodlands
were sold for development between the wars. Although the introduction
of the Green Belt in 1947 provided some protection, many open spaces
in the south-east have now been overdeveloped without giving proper
consideration to maintaining wildlife habitat. This despite their
legal protection stating that, if stag beetles or their larvae are
thought to be present on a site marked for development and they might
be disturbed, it is recommended that someone with expert knowledge of
their habitat needs is present to make sure that they are suitably
relocated nearby. But relocated to where!? In addition the ‘tidying’
of green spaces and the tree surgery practice of ‘stump grinding’
felled and fallen trees has meant that there is little wood left able
to rot.
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| Delicious stag beetle friendly fence post, September 2017 |
But
we should not be too downhearted as increasing awareness has meant
that many green spaces, particularly in London, now have a policy of
retaining areas of dead wood with the specific aim of attracting stag
beetles. I think that one of my favourite scenes in the BBC televsion
series ‘Twenty Twelve’, which satirised London’s preparations
for the Olympics, was when a meeting was held between the Head of
Sustainability and someone from a stag beetle protection group who
had visited the Olympic offices to advocate for dead wood being
retained in Greenwich Park. He was assured that the organisers had
carefully collated a map of all the tree stumps in the Royal Park
with a view to retaining them only to find that the marks on the map
were wastebins!
Sadly,
stag beetles are also directly under threat from us. I have seen two
stag beetles in my life, both in South London. One, gloriously, was
seen flying in a warn summer evening when I had gathered with a group
for a bat walk. I can tell you that we quite forgot the bats,
wonderful though they are, when the sight of a whirygig male stag
beetle came into view. I thought that he must have been a fairy! The
other one was, tragically, squashed on a London pavement.
Warmth-loving stag beetles are attracted to tarmac on pavement and
road surfaces during the summer and, of course, there they are
vulnerable to feet and traffic. Sometimes they are also killed
because they ‘look dangerous’, even though stag beetles are very,
very rarely aggressive to humans (although if you do ever get into an
argument with one then it might be handy to know that it’s the smaller females who have the most powerful jaws!).
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| Stag beetle female by John Hallmen on Flickr |
Despite
this, what I do find lovely about the relationship between humans and
stag beetles, is that they offer us such an opportunity to offer help
and support. In so many ways their proximity to ordinary people holds
the key to their continued survival, revealing to us the shimmering
web of right relationship that is possible between us and our wild
kin. Every year we are becoming more attuned to the needs of our
companion stag beetles and they are increasingly loved. Jeweller Emma
Keating has even produced a silver stag beetle ornament at the
request of her father, which Sir David Attenborough now has on his
desk! Each year, PTES (the People’s Trust for Endangered Species)
hold a stag beetle survey, the ‘Great Stag Hunt’, with 8155
individuals recorded this summer. And, in 2011, scientists conducted
a non-invasive survey which used tiny microphones to listen to stag
beetle larvae communicating with one another. They found that the
‘stridulations’, or rasping noises, made by the larvae increased
if they were handled or placed in solitary confinement. They also
discovered that adult stag beetles find ginger irresistible!
Individuals are also speaking out for stag beetles. In the summer of
2015, the local newspaper, ‘South West Londoner’, ran an article
entitled, ‘Love Is All They Need’ (get it!?), during which
Twickenham resident, Mike Strick made an impassioned plea for
mindfulness of these little winged beings.
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| Stag beetle female by Mike Hargraves for PTES |
And
so, what can we do to support the stag beetle people? With the
countryside and farmland having less and less to offer wild
creatures, one of the best things we can do is to provide homes for
them in our gardens by providing rotting wood or perhaps a log pile.
PTES provide instructions for how to do that here. We can also
resolve to leave dead wood and old fence posts alone, avoid blocking
potential nest sites by not putting decking or a patio over every bit
of bare earth, provide untreated woodchip and mulch, which offers
ideal habitat for egg laying and food for larvae, cover water butts
and provide escape ramps from ponds, be mindful of predators on
summer evenings when the adults might be flying, and avoid mowing our
lawns during the time that the adults are emerging from underground.
And we can also help to count stag beetle numbers though PTES and the
European Stag Beetle Monitoring Network. It seems that often the
survival of our wild kin becomes threatened before we have noticed
what’s happening. Let’s then surround our ‘little deer’ in a
wild web of noticing. With the recent shocking revelation that the
numbers of flying insects has plunged by three quarters over the last
25 years, it might help our own chances of survival too.
Novena for the Fallen
Through
Protection, justice, and
shining health for our wild kin.
This is a prayer is for the
stag beetle people, our little deer.
Blessed Cuthbert,
Beloved Cuddy,
Saint of Salt and Fire,
Antlered ancestor,
Friend of otter, eider,
cormorant, and crow,
Walker of the untamed edge
of Land and Spirit,
Lover of wild places, wild
creatures, and wild grace,
Threader of sea-stars into
wild prayer.
We
stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.
We
lift a wild and shining prayer
of
summer warmth and dreaming dark
for
the stag beetle people,
tiny
walkers of the antlered road,
dwellers
in our nearby wild.
We
call upon the Rot Mother to hold them in her care.
Autumn
woman, earth woman, soft and yielding, dripping sweetness,
our
prayer is for all to see the beauty in decay,
the
blessing of return,
so
that our little does and flying stags
might
be provided food for their larvae
and
sweet moisture in their summer mating,
fuel
for their flight.
Help
us to love the beings of dirt and depth,
elusive
detritovores, careful composters,
detritus
eaters, decomposers,
recyclers
of energy, keepers of the flow.
Blessings
on our earthworms, our woodlice,
sister
mycelia, sacred bacteria,
the
tiny belly-boilerhouse,
harvesting
grace in decay.
Blessed Cuthbert,
Beloved Cuddy,
Saint of Salt and Fire,
Antlered ancestor,
Friend of otter, eider,
cormorant, and crow,
Walker of the untamed edge
of Land and Spirit,
Lover of wild places, wild
creatures, and wild grace,
Threader of sea-stars into
wild prayer.
We
stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.
We
lift a prayer of luminous darkness
for
the larvae of our beetle kin,
curled
into the hope of transformation,
singing
to their egg~mates
through
the vanished forest’s heart,
the
keening song of wood,
knowing
that even the ghosts of fallen trees
can
sustain unseen life.
Invisible
dreamers, long~sleepers,
teach
us metamorphosis,
teach
us to shape~shift from indifference to care,
teach
us to value what lies underground,
teach
us the sounding of soil.
We
lift a prayer for the firework~flight of stag,
a
burrowing and a nesting prayer for doe,
that
their short life in light be sugar-sweet
with
sap and sacred meeting.
Oak
ox, oak deer,
fairy
of our sovereign tree,
diviner
of the woodland edge,
thunder-singer,
light-bringer,
sun-basker,
fire-burner,
ember-carrier,
hearth-hunter,
may
our love for you grow roots,
catch
fire.
Cuddy,
Fire of the North,
help
us to protect our precious southern flames,
who
carry a spark of your blessed name.
Blessed Cuthbert,
Beloved Cuddy,
Saint of Salt and Fire,
Antlered ancestor,
Friend of otter, eider,
cormorant, and crow,
Walker of the untamed edge
of Land and Spirit,
Lover of wild places, wild
creatures, and wild grace,
Threader of sea-stars into
wild prayer.
We
stand in solidarity with you at the roots of the Tree of Life.
Help
us to see that we are the ones that we’ve been waiting for,
that
we have the power to turn the tide, to be the change,
for
our stag beetle family.
Help
us to see our gardens as a privilege and a prayer
as
our own tiny patch of wild,
and
let them be wild;
summer
wild with bare earth for burrowing,
winter
wild with dead wood, the mulch of leaves,
the
smell of earth returning to earth,
the
blessing song of worm,
the
sweet snore of hedgehog,
the
winter sleep of bee,
and
in their presence, find family.
Cuddy,
far-walker, maker of pilgrimage,
help
us to trust our feet,
help
us to know that where we walk is holy ground,
that
we might watch each step we take,
and
be aware, alive, to beings in our path,
walk
lightly on the earth where snails leave silver trails,
where
stag beetles make prayers to the sun.
And
let the tides of our walking leave only life in their wake.
We ask this in the name
of badger and water vole,
hen harrier and
natterjack toad,
red fox and red deer,
dotterel and dormouse,
red squirrel and seal.
Of starling and sparrow,
sand lizard and slow
worm,
hedgehog and hare,
corn marigold and marsh
cleaver.
Of great crested newt
and small fleabane,
ringed plover and
oystercatcher,
pasque flower and
mountain ringlet butterfly,
wildcat and skylark.
Of marsh fritillary
butterfly and shrill carder bee,
blue ground beetle and
white-clawed crayfish,
freshwater
pearl mussel, cormorant, and crow.
Blessed Cuthbert,
Beloved Cuddy,
Saint of Salt and Fire,
Antlered ancestor,
Friend of otter, eider,
cormorant, and crow,
Walker of the untamed edge
of Land and Spirit,
Lover of wild places, wild
creatures, and wild grace,
Threader of sea-stars into
wild prayer.
We stand in solidarity with
you at the roots of the Tree of Life.
May the stag beetle kin
thrive,
may they teach us
gentleness in seeming fierceness,
to not judge by
appearances, to love the unfamiliar.
In following the tracks of
the little deer people,
may we weave a web of
noticing,
shimmering threads of right
relationship,
woven with the family of
all beings.
And in that weaving let
there be
a mending between human and
wild,
a knowing that we can take
communion with life,
that we can be forgiven,
make amends.
The first is for badger.
The second is for hedgehog.
The third is for
Sheffield’s street trees.
The fourth is for otter,
cormorant, and seal,
for salmon, and elver, and
eel.
The fifth is for shark and
orca,
the sixth for stag beetle.
May our string of prayer
beads,
formed in the starry sea
where all things are one,
gathered on the shore of
meeting,
be filled with life, love,
and wild justice
for all beings on this
earth we share.
For this we pray.
Aho
mitake oyasin, amen, blessed be. Inshallah.
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Image: Katherine Strick for South West Londoner
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References and information:
Stag beetle and other information ~
http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/Stag%20beetle%202011%20survey.pdf
How to help stag beetles ~
https://ptes.org/get-involved/surveys/garden/great-stag-hunt/stag-hunt-survey/
