But wait ... there are more invertebrates

... and some steak knives!!!
Possibly due to the warm weather there continue to be a diverse lot of insects around.  Interestingly, so far there have been very few Plague Soldier Beetles (Chauliognathus lugubris).

I will begin with butterflies, of which there have been both high numbers and  - by my standards - wide diversity.

The first is a Common Grass Blue enjoying a daisy rather than the grass ...
 .. and a Meadow Argus (ditto).
This rather tatty specimen is a Yellow Admiral female Common Brown- they are not frequent visitors to our garden and
  1. I thank Suzi for fixing up the ID, and 
  2. am really embarrassed by the mistake, especially in view of what follows..
Possibly part of the reason it is tatty is that it was getting attacked by a male Common Brown butterfly.  (The Admiral  female is on the bottom in this very poor quality snap).
A new butterfly for me (although rated in Michael Braby's book as very common) was Two spotted Line-blue.
Tiger moths are fairly common.  This one was found sitting in the road and Frances carried it home as an artistic subject.  To her surprise after she'd been carrying it for a while it perked up and started wandering around.
Staying with the moth family (of which butterflies are a subset) a woolly bear was encountered on Widgiewa Rd one morning.
A live grasshopper (Family Acrididae) was also found on the road on28 January.

Using the 'road' as a link we also found a Botany Bay Weevil on Whiskers Creek Rd.
I didn't want to leave it to get squashed but found it to have a rather firm grasp on the road chips.

Having got into Coleoptera (ie Beetles) here are some more.  This first one is a monster - about 50mm in length.  Surprisingly I couldn't definitely identify it, but one image from the Museum of Victoria suggested Temognatha variabilis (note species name) and brisbaneinsects commented that this species was the largest beetle they had seen.  So that is my working ID.


In another part of the same clump of Bursaria was a more colourful than usual Pintail Beetle.  I suspect it is Mordella leucostista.
The remaining photos are a miscellany, mainly showing the diverse shapes of insects.

Another species of beetle - I think some form of scarab - has been frequently seen running across the road on our morning dog walks.

Firstly a true bug Stilostethus pacificus.
Then another bug - probably a Shield bug os some type.

That oversubscribed taxon "Unidentified".  In this case I am not game to guess beyond Class level, but I am sure its an insect of some sort.
 I am sure this is a dipterid (only two wings), and possibly a Bee-fly.
This is a Greenbottle - possibly Rutilia sp.

Another fly, but from the Order Mecoptera in this case a Hanging Fly - possibly Harpobittacus  sp.
A damselfly - rather unlurid for this family, but it has its wings folded along its back.
Just to keep the arachnophobes on their toes here is a colourful member of the Areneidae (Orb-weavers).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

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 recall years ago driving al
Read more

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more