Country diary: A maybug wedding on the doorstep | Nicola Chester

Inkpen, Berkshire: Cockchafers are noisy but striking, with their furry eyelashes and big dark eyesIt begins with a battering at the glass, as if someone is flinging gravel. Someone wanting me, calling me outside into the night. I willingly go. But first I turn off the porch light. I'd wondered if they would come this year, and as soon as I open the door, the distinctive drone of a heavy insect zooms in and it collides with my hair.I have walked, seemingly invited, into a maybug's June wedding. Here are the cockchafers, our largest chafer beetles, also known as doodlebugs (from which the German V-1 bombs got their name in the second world war). Disentangling the hook and combs of its legs from a ringlet of hair is a careful process and given the extremely loud buzz, its 3cm size and a thorn-like appendage, actually an egg-laying "pygidium", I'd be forgiven for reacting differently, particularly as another hits my chin and falls down my top. Continue reading...