Country diary: Coprophagous beetles are an agricultural asset | Phil Gates

Deerness Valley, County Durham: I smuggle some horse manure home and watch these fascinating creatures make good use of itWaiting for the clip-clop of hooves to fade away, using a plastic bag as a glove, I picked up a tennis-ball-sized steaming lump of horse manure. Checking that no one else was around - this kind of old-school natural history might seem a tad eccentric to a casual passerby - I hurried home: I had dung beetles to feed.I'd found them on the edge of a pasture and, coincidentally, had recently been reading The Sacred Beetle, Jean-Henri Fabre's century?old account of the breeding biology of scarabs, including our native species. Could I witness what the great French naturalist first described in such fascinating detail? Fabre, meticulous observer, curious experimentalist, cautious interpreter of facts, spent years studying these "dealers in ordure", whose coprophilous habits make them an agricultural asset. One study has estimated their value to the UK cattle industry, as soil improvers and recyclers of dung, at ?367m per annum. Continue reading...