Stag Beetle / Jelenjak ♀

Description:

This is a female specimen but on the last photo you can see the male next to it. Adults appear during late May to the beginning of August being most active in the evenings. Females lay their eggs in a piece of decaying wood. It lives in holes in old trees and dead trunks, in the forest as well as in groves. Forest management, in eliminating old trees and dead wood, eliminates at the same time the habitat and food of this species. Once quite common, the population of the Lucanus cervus, along with that of other species of beetles which feed on wood, is in steep decline, and is now listed as a globally threatened/declining species. Adults only live for a few months feeding on nectar and tree sap. Their slow, lumbering flight, usually at dusk, makes a distinctive low-pitched buzzing sound. The males fly more readily than the females.

Habitat:

Europe, deciduous forests. I have found it on the oak tree, there were really lots of them but more male specimens :)

Notes:

Lucanus cervus is registered in the second appendix of the Habitats Directive of the European Union from 1992, which requires that member states set aside Special Areas of Conservation. The species is also registered in the third appendix of the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (Berne convention) of 1982 and Schedule 5 of the UK's Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Related spotting (male): http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/317...