Clip-shear, chewer of dahlias, Dermapteran, earwig

I was stuck for an interesting image blip today, until I took our dog out for a walk in the dark tonight and spotted this earwig. It was going about its business, looking for fusty food waste in a plastic recycling box out on the street. The straight-ish pincers tell me it is a female earwig and it belongs to the common species Forficula auricularia. Although my phone camera works poorly in low light, I was wearing my fabulously bright head torch, which saved the blipping day, as well as casting some interesting shadows under the earwig. For scale, she is about 12mm in length. People are often quite squeamish about earwigs but would you view them differently if I told you that the mother earwig guards her babies until they are big enough to fend for themselves, a relatively rare behaviour for insects other than bees, wasps and ants. For more information on these insects, see the Buglife website.