Mingus Trail

[The15thMember]

My family and I hiked up to the Mingus Family Cemetery yesterday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  I saw so many aggregations of little Andrena mining bees emerging.  We saw a lot of eastern comma butterflies puddling along the trail, although they were too fast for me to get any good pictures of them with my phone camera. We also found this beautiful beetle, which I can't seem to ID.  I'm inclined to think it's some sort of dynastid beetle, but even after scouring Bugguide for around a hour, I couldn't seem to find any that are this color.  And Google was no help, since "large green beetle NC" and other related searches just gives me page after page of June bugs.  We also saw some interesting mushrooms and some beautiful moss sporophytes. 

[neillsayers]

15th, My bride says it's likely a Japanese Beetle. That might help your search.

[The15thMember]

I don't think so.  Here's a Japanese beetle.  Notice the different colors and the different head.  Also this beetle had soil caked on its legs, indicating it digs, which is something Japanese beetle adults don't do, to my knowledge.  Plus this beetles was 2-3 times larger than a Japanese beetle.

[Bakersdozen]

15th, My bride says it's likely a Japanese Beetle. That might help your search.

In my part of the country,  it's too early for Japanese Beetles.  But, she was seeing butterflies, so maybe.

[neillsayers]

Could be a dung beetle.

[The15thMember]

The BugGuiders were able to ID it to genus level for me.  It's some sort of earth-boring scarab of the Geotrupes genus.  I was looking in right superfamily, but the wrong family.    https://bugguide.net/node/view/12537