The Beetle Has Landed

I stepped outside this morning to admire the garden, and enjoy the first moderately humid morning we have had all week and came across this beast hanging out on some scrap wood I left out overnight on my saw horses.  The wood scraps were left over from a project I am currently working on which will be a topic for another post.  Back to the beetle!  This bug was a good 2” plus in length not including the antennae and my first thought was it’s the dreaded Asian Longhorn Beetle (ALB) so I headed back in house for a Google search!  After Googling “longhorn beetle New Hampshire” I ended up with a link to this handy PDF showing native NH beetles, put out by the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development, which helped me to identify my beetle as a Northeastern Pine Sawyer Beetle, and confirm that it was not the evil Asian Longhorn Beetle.

For more exciting reading on the ALB this article from the Eagle Tribune (2009) had some interesting info, but basically the ALB is bad news and we should be on the look out for them if you see them.  This was the biggest bug sighting that I have ever had and he will not be coming down for breakfast tomorrow…