To panic about what the hell this is in my garden? Pic attached

[Helppooo]

what on earth is this? Is it dangerous?

It's a cockchafer as PP has said. AKA May bug - good timing 😂 They are big but harmless.

It's my cousin Barbara!

Leave it alone, that would be the lesser of two weevils

(And yes, I know that technically a cockchafer is species of scarab beetle, not a weevil but I really had to make that joke somewhere and suspect that I can find both etymological and entomological pedants on mumsnet to be offended by it 😁)

(Edited for a spelling mistake that nearly ruined the pun)

Some of these beetles spend years and years and years underground as larva and when they finally emerge around May, they only have a limited time to find a hot date and to mate as by August they'll be dead. The end.

Please be nice to them by just letting them be, for their very short external lives.

Maybugs. There are millions of them where I live. Everytime I garden ( which is rare admittedly) I find hundreds of their larva. You hear them diving into the windows at night. The bats will be happy.

The only insect that I don't like is the dreaded mosquito. Little buzzy biting barstards.

May bugs/cockchafers - are they the things that appear around this time of the year, sound like a B52 bomber with an 80-a-day habit, but have no navigation skills as they always fly into your head then get stuck in your hair?

I wondered what they looked like.

It's a shield beetle. Probably fallen out of a tree or bush? Harmless as far as I know.

Just me or is it quite cute?

It’s a beetle that aliens use as a scout to assess whether it’s worth invading our planet. You see them each year so I can only assume each year they decide it’s not worth the hassle and frankly I can see their point.

Turns out there's a Looong wikipedia page (in German) on the song.

2 out of 3 Germans knew it in 1999, according to a respected pollster, and some folklorists think it references Norse myths about the end of the world. And someone's found an English-language version.

May bug. Why would it be dangerous?!

My daughter, then about 9, found one of these in the garden. It seemed to be dead so she put it in a jar to take into school to show everyone. She had the jar in her room over night and it woke up. Buzzing and rattling in the jar it sounded terrifying.

The cockchafers themselves are harmless and downright stupid, but their larvae are something else. Chafer grubs are whacking great horrible revolting things (google images if you dare) and they can cause serious damage to plant roots, especially if they get into pots.

One of those fell out of a tree in the garden onto my head last year. It was really painful so they are a bit dangerous.

I learnt the name cockchafer beetle as a child. I am now middle aged and this thread is the first time I have realised it's a funny name!

It’s a May bug, just encountered a few whilst in the hot tub, bloody pests, they don’t hurt you but they do dive bomb your head. Bloody nuisance that’s what they are. I was saying it ain’t even May for 2 days. They are actually called cockchafers 😂 I think they might actually be blind because they are fairly erratic whilst flying.

Don’t stand on them they stink. Have them in France around now let them be wont last long. Circle of life and all that.

I thought it was to do with them rubbing their legs together to make the noise?

This has tickled me, op
Wait til you see a stag beetle in flight!

Cockchafer! Harmless but can make the lawn a mess.

😂

Wikipedia re the name:

"The name "cockchafer"[22] derives from the late-17th-century usage of "cock"[23] (in the sense of expressing size or vigour) + "chafer"[24] which simply means an insect of this type, referring to its propensity for gnawing and damaging plants. The term "chafer" has its root in Old English ceafor or cefer, of Germanic origin and is related to the Dutch kever, all of which mean "gnawer" as it relates to the jaw. As such, the name "cockchafer" can be understood to mean "large plant-gnawing beetle" and is applicable to its history as a pest animal."

It looks like some kind of red cloth. I wouldn’t worry about it.

Cochchafer. I come from the NE and had never seen one in my life before. Now in Suffolk and they're everywhere in May. Hence maybugs.

A cockchafer. More affectionately known as a Willyrubber in our household 😂

Or by our very scientific name "DickusChafium"