Clip-shears! Clipey! Earywig!

Backblip. On the evening that I took this the blipfoto, my garden seemed to be full of earwigs (the title of the post is just some of the names I heard them being called when I was growing up in the east of Scotland). Gardeners don't really like earwigs as they can cause much damage to treasured blooms (Dahlias, anyone?) but, as I also heard Bob Flowerdew explaining on BBC Radio 4's Gardener's World last week, they are also predators on other pests in the garden so they are, in reality, also a friend of the gardener.

I am pretty sure this is the common, widespread species Forficula auricularia. Related to grasshoppers and crickets, these are AMAZING little beasts. Did you know that, to fit their wings under those golden wing cases, they have to make 42 individual folds? How to manage that and still have a structure capable of a flapping flight? Material scientists and aeronautical engineers, read that and weep!