Humungous buzzy thing

[Weedon]

Working around my wisteria the other day I heard what I assumed were bees in the flowers. But they were not bees but ginormous black flying critters with sort of bluey luminous wings. These were doing the same thing as bees do, going from flower to flower and buzzing like a bee.
What are they?

[The Riff-Raff Element]

They are carpenter bees - so called because they build nests by chiseling into wood. They can sting, but are very slow to anger. Very pretty, I think.

[Weedon]

Thanks for all the replies and yes that's exactly what they are.
I've never seen them before but I agree they are not really scary its just that they make a loud buzzing noise and makes them appear so.
The big flying things with brown armour plating on their backs that come out at dusk and seem to hurl themselves at our windows I knew them as May bugs when I was a kid. Me and my mates used to go out in the evenings and thrash them with cricket bats. (Horrible kids I know)
Every evening we have a Little Owl that perches on our roof. We have a little window we call our porthole, like a velux only tiny, that we can stick our head out of and watch it. I haven't yet managed to photograph it, I think its shy.
A few weeks ago after being away for a while we had another L/Owl trapped in our log burner after presumably falling down the chimney. Despite my efforts I was not able to rescue it because it kept hopping back into the chimney space until I managed to sneak up on it and close the flap in the flue, but later I found it dead in the log burner. It must have been in the chimney for some time and presumably died from lack of nourishment. Nice to know the other one doesn't hold it against us.