A rare species of big-eyed bug has been spotted in the Netherlands for the first time in 122 years – days before it died.

David Sies, a preacher from Harderwijk, noticed a miniature insect with its distinctive bulging eyes while out catching spiders in Kootwijkerzand, a dune landscape near Apeldoorn.

“There are always things to find in the undergrowth,” said Sies. “And I often catch other things like bettles and bugs. This time I saw a tiny bug crawling around. He caught my eye because he had a bigger head.”

After he submitted photos with a macro lens camera to nature observation site waarneming.nl, it was confirmed to be Geocoris megacephalus, a relative of the common bedbug, which was last recorded in the Netherlands in 1902.

But when Sies went back to the site where he left the creature, whose Dutch name is grootkopboloogwants, he saw it had expired in the meantime.

“I put it in a box with some grit,” he told Omroep Gelderland. “When I heard it was a rare species, I went looking for it again. Then I saw it lying dead in the grit.”

Sies said he had preserved the insect’s body in alcohol. “I don’t know if anybody wants it. I’ve often found spiders that end up at Naturalis [natural history museum] in Leiden,” he said. “And sometimes I keep them for myself.”