Invertebrates of Spring

My post about the ANPS Wednesday Walk this week contained quite a lot of photographs of invertebrates.  So it is not surprising that a few interesting ones have begun to turn up at home.

I'll start with a Leaf Beetle which surprisingly didn't fall off its perch when I twisted the leaf to get a profile image.  This looks rather similar to a Leaf Monkey Beetle Geloptera sp shown on Brisbane insects.

While this moth appears a bit worn around the edges (this is probably a consequence of living in the depths of Joycea pallida tussocks, where I found it) I liked the fine filiform antennae and the big black eyes.

While grovelling in the scrub looking at a strange orchid (of which more in a later post) I acquired this passenger.  Clearly a cicada (family Cicadidae) and possibly Pauropsalta corticinus (Bark Squeaker).

On the 23rd of November it seemed the insects were beginning to hit their straps.  A walk around the paddock generated a Transverse Ladybird (Cocchinella transversalis) feeding on a Great Mullein leaf.

Getting back to the garden I found there was a storm of insects ranging in size from honeybees down to very small flies feeding on the nectar and pollen being produced by a heavily flowering Callistemon.   I have not, so far been able to identify the insects and as their behaviour was to land and immediately burrow down into the florets not many photographs were taken, and most of those which were are rubbish.  Here are some of the less atrocious ones.