EARWIG-O, EARWIG-O, EARWIG-O

When I took all the apples out of my bucket, behold!  Two fast-moving invertebrates.

Earwigs.  They like to eat windfall apples and also dahlia petals and chrysanthemums, so not very popular with gardeners.  

But I have a soft spot for them, especially the females, who are excellent mothers.  They stay with their eggs, tending them, protecting them and licking them clean to prevent fungal infection.. 

Photo: Tom Oates on wikipedia

 They continue to look after the 'nymphs' as the babies are called until they are big enough to fend for themselves.  If you disturb this little family when you lift a stone, they will scatter.  But they soon come back together again.

The two in my bucket were females.  You can tell from the pincers at the end of their bodies.  The females' pincers are straighter than the curved pincers of the males as you can see below in this image from the Guardian website.  Male and female have a pleasant conjugal life underground during the winter but in spring the male leaves or is chucked out by the female.

Male earwig with curve pincers

Earwigs like the dark.  That's probably why the ones in my bucket look so panicky.  They feed at night and spend the day under stones, loose tree bark or deep in flower heads.

There are more than 1000 species of earwig worldwide but this, the common earwig, is the commonest of our 6 or 7 species in Britain.

Rather sweet, I think.