Beetles and Nail Polish

Early summer evenings bring these ferocious looking beetles to our yard. Our kids delight in catching them every year. They rear up on their hind legs and show off their pincers if you get close! By July, there don't seem to be as many of them. This year, we decided to be scientifical about our observations.


We decided to count them. But how can you tell the ones you counted last night from the ones you didn't count tonight? Answer: Nail polish!


We put a dab of finger-nail polish on the back of each beetle we saw in our yard. Eleven beetles got a yellow dab on June 14th and six got an orange dab the next night. We've been too busy/ out of town/ raining to count any more beetles after that.

So, will we see beetles with yellow or orange dabs on their backs next year? How many? What color should we dab beetles with next year? Stay tuned to find out!

(Jonah and I discovered via the internet that these are stag beetles. They are feeding off of rotting wood under ground. Indeed, we find a lot of them in the part of the yard where the previous owner had a garden and rose bush.)