The black sand-digger

If you go for a walk early in the day, before it gets too hot, and before the sand is trampled by hundreds of people’s feet and dogs’ paws, you will often find something which resembles a tiny tractor track in the sand. The track shows that a coastal ground beetle (Broscus cephalotes) has been on the prowl during the night. The beetle is a large, black ground beetle which is nocturnal and will attack and kill anything it can catch. If you find one, you should be a bit careful, as it has strong jaws and a painful bite. It’s easiest to find at night if you go for a walk with a torch. It isn’t as hot as during the day, so this is when the ground beetle and other animals emerge from their hiding places.

The beetle isn’t easy to find during the daytime but try anyway. Sometimes you can follow its tractor track back to one of its tunnels that it has dug under a stone or a fallen tree trunk, or under a tuft of grass that is stabilising the sand. Otherwise, try digging up some handfuls of loose sand and put it through a sieve, it’s worth taking a closer look.