Does anyone know what kind of creature this is? We found it in the middle of a field at Blue House Farm last week.
At first I thought that it was a water beetle larva that had somehow attached itself to the fleece of a sheep drinking in the ditch nearby and had been dumped accidentally in the grass. However, it has no legs and the rigid exoskeleton means that it only has limited movement. Thus I imagine that it must be some form of pupa but what of I have no idea We tried releasing it in the water but it obviously could not swim so we placed it in a crevice on the bank on the grounds that the most likely pupation site would be underground.