To ask for your help identifying this beetle?

[AdventureIsWaiting]

DH just came running upstairs to show me this beetle he found downstairs this morning. It's about 0.75 of my thumb in length and similar to my thumb in width, with a curve on its back tapering to a point which isn't obvious from the photo, i.e. huge.

Neither of us have ever seen anything like it (we're in the UK) and he's very into nature so I'm a bit nonplussed. He's released it into the garden but if it's super rare maybe I should be emailing someone? (Or you can tell me it's super common and I know nothing about nature despite growing up in the countryside )

It's cockchafer beetle. Common at this time of year. Harmless.
Warn DH that it might be after his cock

I saw one of these last week for the first time (UK). It’s a Cockchafer or May bug. Scared the crap out of me when I first saw it flying towards me but they are harmless 😊

Thank you for posting this - we had the very same beetle in our garden yesterday - not flying thank goodness - and I wondered what it was.

@Mitchellernie

@ABoxersMum They fly?! I now feel slightly better about shrieking "Get that away from me!" as he tried to shove it under my face whilst I was drinking coffee in bed with no means of escape...

Thanks very much both - I will report back to him. I have heard of May bugs ... I have a vague recollection of them swarming all over our house when I was a little girl and we had to keep the windows closed, but I didn't realise that's what they looked like up close.

It's a cockchafer, are you in Kent by any chance? Lots of them near the coast.

@AdaColeman No, nowhere near the coast. And tbh although we are in the 'countryside' there's a lot of urban sprawl about - nowhere near as rural as where I grew up - so the wildlife tends to be very standard.

[quote AdventureIsWaiting]@Mitchellernie

@ABoxersMum They fly?! I now feel slightly better about shrieking "Get that away from me!" as he tried to shove it under my face whilst I was drinking coffee in bed with no means of escape...

Thanks very much both - I will report back to him. I have heard of May bugs ... I have a vague recollection of them swarming all over our house when I was a little girl and we had to keep the windows closed, but I didn't realise that's what they looked like up close.[/quote]
Most if not all beetles can fly! Those hard cases with the split on their backs are their wing covers. Haven’t you ever watched a ladybird take off? It’s just the same thing!

You can always post photos of wildlife on the ispot website and people will help you with identification:

www.ispotnature.org/

Never mind that why is it on your breadboard???

My old flat overlooked a gorgeous flowering cherry planted in the 1940s. Cockchafers spent their larval stage in the ground underneath it (about five years), and every few years, they'd come out en masse to climb up the tree and then go for their mating flights.

You had to keep the windows closed because it sounded like you were under aerial bombardment with ping pong balls.

They're just soooo clumsy.

Of course, with pesticides and trees being cut down all over the place to make places look a bit tidier, to stick extensions on that double the size of houses or to bung carparking down, they aren't as common a sight now and in some areas, are practically extinct.