Red Longhorn Beetle

The morning was spent writing a conservation strategy and completing a licence application. I tend to take frequent strolls round the garden when I'm working, and on one of these I was very surprised to spot this male Red Longhorn Beetle Stictoleptura rubra sitting on a Cosmos flower. 

This is a fairly local species whose larvae develop in dead conifer wood, and is most frequent in East Anglia, with localised populations scattered elsewhere in southern Britain, generally where there are frequent conifer plantations. We regularly record it from railway sleepers at one of our brownfield sites but have never seen one in the garden before. 

It stayed around all day, spending much of the afternoon nectaring on the Echinops flowers. We do have a stack of conifer logs in the far corner of the garden, so maybe it's a home-grown specimen!