Soldiers of Love

So like lightning bugs, these beetles puzzled me. There they were, doing the deed in the day time rather than flying up from the grass at night, calling to one another. I suspected they could not be lightning bugs, and a little research taught me they aren't: they're first cousins called margined leatherwings (Chauliognathus marginatus).One of 3500 species of soldier beetles, the margined leatherwing wears a morning coat of butterscotch dotted with chocolate, a description far less successful than this from Chicago Wilderness: " . . . the margined soldier beetle sports a beautiful uniform of orange and black, along with an impressive pair of long, curving antennae. With a maximum length of about a half inch (without its antennae), it is larger and more colorful than many of its cousins. Its orange wing-covers, outlined in black, are indeed reminiscent of the soldiers' uniforms of past centuries. The beetles are also sometimes nicknamed 'leatherwings,' because these covers, unlike the soft shells of most beetles, are soft and leathery."

Soldiers, perhaps, but soldiers of love on this day in June. If Ron Trigg's excellent article about this little beetle is accurate, these two will be dead by the end of the month, exhausted, no doubt, by the success of their athletic reproduction.