More Invertebrates of February

Denis Wilson has described February as the Month of Insects.  As usual he is spot on.  I had started a post a mere 9 days ago with images of insects and arachnids (the gastropods have been uncooperative thus far)  in this area and find that to get through it takes 10 hits on the "page-down" key.  Enough already!  I start a new post.

The daisies have been cleaned up but there is still nutrient stuff around.  I suspect this is a fruit-fly (possibly  Drosophila sp) lurking on a member of the Asteraceae.

Nearby I found this large (at least 30mm) beastie.  After a brief diversion into March Flies I have concluded it is a Flower wasp.  The images I have found for the Black Flower Wasp (Discolla soror) don't show the yellow band on the top of the thorax but i wonder if that is simply an accretion of pollen?  Everything else fits so nicely.  A posting by CSIRO explains that these animals parasitise lawn scarabs which is a good thing!

We can now move back into moths.The image below is of a rather small specimen (perhaps 10mm front to back) feeding on a Helichrysum.  The proboscis is clearly visible .

Astonishingly, on Googling {bright blue moth} I got almost exactly the same image - and the image was taken in Canberra.  The Chew family site tells me these are Forester moths and looking at a site by Don Herbison-Evans and Stella Crossley suggests that the full full name is Pollanisus apicalis.  Completing the collection of the helpful lepidopterists of Australia the image in the latter site is by Donald Hobern.


As I arrived home on 12 February i noticed a small, but brightly coloured insect crawling up the windscreen of the car.  I managed to get a flash shot of it before it jumped off somewhere in the garage.  I am pretty confident this is Eurymeloides pulchra, the Gumtree Hopper.

I thought the antennae on this moth looked attractive (even though the rest of it looked as though it had had a rough night!)

Quite late (by our standards) on 27 February a large Hawk Moth fluttered at the kitchen window.  It eventually settled down for a photo.

By searching around the usual websites I was able to find it to be Hippotion scrofa.  The larval foodstuff of this species includes Fuschias so we will have to keep an eye on Frances' collection!  The red 'patches' arein fact the hind wings which are often hidden under the forewings.
In my previous insect post I included a couple of images of Polysastra sp.  The second of these suggested a demographically significant event was occurring.  I think the outcome would frighten Malthus!

A bank of pruned daisies about 4m long by 2 wide had an infestation of about this density throughout.  Most of the leaves were tattier than those in the image, suggesting that the bug feeds on daisies!  Note that the position adopted of some of these suggests this population explosion has still got a few bangs left in it.

On 17 February while picking some blackberries (yes I know they are a weed, but they are a nice tasting weed)a green bug dived into the picking vat.  It appears to be a stink-bug of the family Pentatomidae but I cannot match it up to any of the images I can locate.  The first image also shows 1 segment of a blackberry for comparison.

In this case I am pretty sure the yellow is not pollen.  However it doesn't appear on any of the species of bugs I have seen photographed.

On 20 February I came across a couple of caterpillar photo-ops.  The first is definitely a woolly bear which, from browsing the photos and text from the Butterfly House  may be a member of the CTENUCHINAE.  The head-on shot in particular makes me think of Don King. It was dining on some young Yellow Box leaves.

I also found what I believe to be a bunch of sawfly larva.  The way they raised their rear parts looked very spitfire-like.

Our morning walks have become a near-nutritional experience as we continually walk through spider webs strung across the track.  The distance these creatures manage to bridge can be at least 4m.  here are a couple of snaps of these engineers.

Late in the afternoon of 25 February I was looking around a Yellow Box with a lot of epicormic growth and spotted this little creature.

I think it is a beetle, but might be a true-bug.  The most surprising thing was the way it seemed to be very aware of my presence: as I moved around trying to get a clear shot at it, the beast scurried to the opposite side of the twig!  My general experience is that insects tend to ignore people.