Great Stag Hunt III Report
The third Great Stag Hunt (GSH III) ran throughout 2006 and 2007. Thanks to all of you who took part. We received an astounding 4,300 records online and a further 3,000 were posted into us. You also uploaded 650 photographs, which was really useful in confirming outlying populations.
The core range of the species appears to be stable and be broadly similar to that seen before. The pattern of distribution is broadly the same as that seen in 1998 and 2002, with hotspots in the Bournemouth, Ipswich and London areas. The populations in Cardiff and the Severn Valley are still present and there seem to be slightly more records for south Oxfordshire than there were previously. Of particular interest are the records, backed up by photos, of stag beetles in Bristol, Bath, Hereford and from Stockport in Cheshire. The records from Stockport came from an urban garden. The owner of the house reported that he had male and female beetles in his garden over a period of about 10 days at the end of May / start of June 2006. This would appear to be one of the most northerly confirmed records we have for this species in the UK, which is fantastic.
Away from the core population we are still seeing a scattering of records as we did in 2002 and 1998. As long as we continue to see some records in the general "fringe" it indicates the population distribution has not contracted. However if we started losing these fringe records then this might be the first indication of a decline, which does not appear to be the case.
Below is a map of the records for 2006/07 overlaid on top of the stag beetle records for 1998/2002. (blue = 2006/07, green = 1998/ 2002)
As well as photographs of stag beetles we also received pictures of lesser stag beetles, cockchafers, dung beetles and ground beetles. Of most interest were the two records we received for the sawyer beetle Prionus coriarius. This very large longhorn beetle is classed as Nationally Scarce (A) and is very rarely seen.
