Invertebrates of January

This is my set of invertebrate photographs for January 2014, following on, with hopefully not too much repetion, from a set for December.  Some will be named from the start, others will require further research and some will remain simply "insects".

Arachnophobes may wish to avoid this post as there is a close up of a spider and a robber fly.

The initial set were all taken on some large daisies growing in our lawn.  Here we have a beetle - taking a guess - some form of scarab.  Confirmed as  Microvalgus sp.
 A dipterid fly.
 The first Polystgima punctata (Flower Chafers) have appeared.
I suspect more of them are due in the future.  Even when you seek privacy on the underside of a petal the camera still intrudes.
This is a collection of Acacia pravississima seeds around a hole made by some small ants.
 This is a spider (so this is invertebrates, not insects).
A Common Blue butterfly (Zizina labradus).  This image is mainly because of the amount of detail I (or at least the camera) managed to capture.
It seems that these insects Dicranolaius villosus are not the "usual" Melyrid, but this year they are very common at our place.  This was a particularly large grouping.
 I am reasonably sure this is a bee-fly (family Bombyliidae) but I can't get any closer than that.  Wrong: it is apparently Trichophthalma punctata, a member of the Nemestrinidae, sometimes called Tangle-vein flies
Our new creek crossing was enhanced by a Christmas Beetle Anoplognathus chloropyrus.
Frances drew my attention to a spider dealing with a Robber Fly (possibly Zosteria rosevillensis).  I repeat my warning to those who get a little overcome by spiders: shut your eyes here.
 The kiss of the spider woman?
Down at the Creek I found a mid-sized Dragonfly perched on the bank.
The wings being held perpendicular to the body say 'dragonfly' rather than 'damselfly' but I can't get further than that.

Continued here.

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Nice insects - but why write off the rest of the month, so quickly?
Still awaiting your final wrap of the weather for 2013, especially rainfall total for the year.
Denis
3 January 2014 at 09:43:00 GMT+11
Flabmeister said…
Denis

Thanks for the comment.

This post will get added to as the month progresses with a mention in my update post at the end of the month. Unless it gets horrendously long in which case I will start another post.

If I leave it to the end of the month to start I have trouble retrieving the photos.

Martin
3 January 2014 at 21:00:00 GMT+11
Judi Gray said…
these are great - some of which we have seen here, but I didn't know what they were called - I look forward to the additional photos to come.
4 January 2014 at 09:43:00 GMT+11
Flabmeister said…
Thanks Judith.

Our Bursaria spinosa(blackthorn) is just about to hit its straps so the invertebrate diversity is going to get a major boost.

Martin
4 January 2014 at 11:52:00 GMT+11
Kimberi Pullen said…
A few more names for your insects. The 'bee fly'is Trichophthalma punctata, a member of the Nemestrinidae, sometimes called Tangle-vein flies. The first beetle is indeed a scarab, of the genus Microvalgus (can't give you a species).
8 December 2016 at 01:59:00 GMT+11
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more