Rhinoceros beetle grub, lost

Rhinoceros beetle grub
An unexpected visitor

I found this grub wandering across the floor of my workroom early in November.

Its size isn’t obvious from the photo but it was big, as insects go – about the size of my little finger. I recognised it as the larva (grub) of an Australian Rhinoceros Beetle, Xylotrupes australicus, which were reasonably common in our garden. Their common name comes from the males’ impressive horns, which they use when fighting over mating rights. The females, lacking the horns, look very different and are sometimes called Elephant Beetles.

How and why the grub got in to my room puzzled me but the room does open on to the garden so I didn’t think much of it. Six weeks later I found the surprising solution to the puzzle.
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Ladybirds – life cycle and benefits

Our Silver Wattle flowered extravagantly a couple of months ago and carpeted the whole front garden, especially its own leaves, with pollen and flower fragments in the aftermath. Sooty mould grew on the moisture trapped by the debris and lots of tiny bugs arrived to fed on the pollen and the mould. Those bugs in turn attracted predators, especially ladybirds.

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Rowes Bay wetlands

I took my camera down to the wetland boardwalk behind Rowes Bay Sustainability Centre and the (new) Landcare Nursery a week ago. It was a very hot day but I found a good shady spot with views to nearby swamp and perches, and waited for the birds to forget I was there.

They did, and I got nice photos of half a dozen species. The best of them have already been shared online so I will just post links to them as they appear on iNaturalist: Sacred Kingfisher, Masked Lapwing, Koel (female), Hornbill Friarbird, and Pheasant Coucal.

But I’m a bug-hunter too, so here are some of the smaller creatures I saw from the boardwalk.

Leaf beetle
Leaf beetle

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The burrowing wasp

We’ve had a couple of big mounds of mulch in our garden since the stump-grinding people did some work for us almost a year ago. “Leave us some mulch,” I said, and they did.

We have gradually spread it around and dug it in, but we’ve had a surprising amount of help from little friends – mostly big fat white grubs which are scarab larvae.

A big black wasp has been keen to help, too.

Flower Wasp
Wasp digging into the mulch

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