wasp Archives - Page 2 of 8

Insects enjoying the nectar

Bug hunters love flowers, not just for their own sake but for the bugs they attract. This set of photos shows most of the insects I saw in just ten or fifteen minutes on one profusely flowering shrub in Anderson Park, beginning with the wasps.

blue-black wasp on white flowers — Blue flower wasp, Scoliidae

This wasp is possibly a Blue Flower Wasp, Scolia soror, and certainly a close relation if not that particular species. There was another similar one feeding on the same shrub, distinguishable by a bright yellow patch on the back of its head; it may have been Scolia verticalis.

Scoliidae is just one family of wasps, the Flower wasps. Gasteruptidae (top pic) is another (BugGuide calls them “Carrot Wasps” and you can see why, but I don’t think they have a genuinely common name), and there are many more including Polistinae, the Paper wasps. This index page on Graeme’s site shows them with their nearest relations, the bees and ants.

small green bee on white flowers — Green native bee

This small native bee (Colletidae) is similar to one which appeared on my earlier all-on-one-plant post. The beetle below is not just similar – it is definitely the same species:

brown beetle on white flowers — Brown Flower Beetle, Glycyphana stolata

small fawn butterfly on flowers — Lycaenid butterfly

The odd angle of this shot was forced on me by my uncooperative subject but does allow me to point out a neat bit of mimicry: the eye-spots and tails on the lower part of the wings are a surprisingly good imitation of the butterfly’s head and antennae (there’s an even more striking example here, on a related butterfly). I’m sure this is not a coincidence, since tricking predators into attacking non-vital parts is great for survival.

blue dragonfly perching on twig — Palemouth Shorttail dragonfly, Brachydiplax denticauda

All the other insects here were attracted to the flowers. This dragonfly just wanted to perch for a while and found a suitable bare twig. He happens to be the first carnivore (insectivore?) on the page and he may well be looking out for prey amongst the smaller bugs attracted to the flowers. As I said in the beginning, bug hunters love flowers.

Accidental artistry

I have been photographing insects for several years now and usually know, for better or for worse, how a shot will turn out. I still get surprises, of course, and most of them are deleted very quickly. This one was a surprise – the combination of lighting, lens and camera settings gave me an effect I didn’t expect – but I rather like it.

The subject is a common mud-dauber, Sceliphron laetum.

A prowl around my garden

I went for a prowl around my garden on Friday morning, camera in hand, to see what bugs were around. My intention was to take photos of everything, whether I already had photos of it or not, as a way of documenting (and reminding myself) what is active at this change-of-season time.

In the event I missed a few on purpose and a few because they were too quick for me but ended up with presentable shots of 25 species. I uploaded them all to Flickr and they can be viewed as a slideshow here (if it doesn’t work for you, click here to go straight to Flickr). For information about them, enter full-screen mode and click “show info”, or click on the photo to go to the Flickr page (new window).

What did I miss?

I saw many of the butterflies I mentioned in my previous post but didn’t bother chasing them;
a hover-fly, a brown paper wasp and a black and yellow mud-dauber wasp escaped before I could get a shot;
I could easily have taken photos of St Andrew’s Cross, Spiny and Silver orb-weaving spiders but I know I could do that any time;
I didn’t photograph all the species of small dark flies I saw, because there are too many and they are too similar; and
By restricting my collection to that one-hour prowl I missed the Eurema butterfly, Giant Grasshopper, Neon Cuckoo Bee and swarm of tiny bees I saw later in the day.

There’s a lot of life in a garden, if only you look!

Wasp and caterpillar

Wasp on tip of hibiscus leaf — Wasp in hunting mode

When I saw this wasp (Vespidae, Eumeninae) looking so busy on the tip of an hibiscus leaf I naturally looked more closely and saw what she was after, the very slim yellowish caterpillar in its retreat.

The action didn’t last long. The wasp flew off and the caterpillar was no more to be seen; I assumed that the wasp got her prey but it’s possible that the caterpillar escaped by dropping from the leaf on a thread of the silk it used to construct its retreat.

The caterpillar's retreat: the sides of the leaf are pulled together with silk, and there is a caterpillar-sized hole at the upper end — The caterpillar’s retreat: the sides of the leaf are pulled together with silk, and there is a caterpillar-sized hole at the upper end

I had seen these constructions before but never known what made them or why, so the incident solved a mystery for me.

The wasp, by the way, wasn’t hunting on her own account but for her progeny. All adult Vespidae (which covers most of the insects most of us think of as wasps – see this page on the Brisbane Insects site) feed on nectar but hunt caterpillars or spiders for their larvae. Paper wasps are included in the family – see this post about their life cycle for a photo of one with a ball of minced caterpillar – and here for good measure is a shot of our large black-and-yellow mud dauber with a caterpillar.

If it matters, these photos were taken nearly three months ago, in mid March, but I didn’t find time to upload them before my holidays. Better late than never, as they say.

What’s around – mid May 2013

Almost since I began this blog I have been writing a monthly summary of bug life in my garden (although I missed last month because I was away from home) and, having just checked what I wrote last year and the year before, I don’t feel compelled to re-do the whole survey again now since the results would be pretty much the same.

Differences? Our Chocolate Soldiers, Junonia hedonia, have been far less common for the last few months than they were in the same season in previous years; and I have found a few unusual bugs which really don’t belong in a seasonal list but do deserve posts to themselves, so I will write them up soon. Meantime, here’s a selection of creatures I have photographed recently in the garden:

Yellow butterfly — This Lemon Migrant, Catopsilia pomona, thought it was well enough hidden in the plumbago but it wasn’t – quite.

green caterpillar on leaf — An unidentified caterpillar

spiny blackish caterpillar — Mature caterpillar of the Cairns Birdwing butterfly, Ornithoptera priamus euphorion. The red horns are the “osmetrium” which it extrudes to frighten potential predators.

We’ve had a few adult Birdwings around recently and one female has been so successful in laying eggs that our Aristolochia vines (see this older post) are being eaten to the ground by the caterpillars. The first to pupate will be okay but, sadly, I doubt that later hatchlings will survive.

Very hairy brown caterpillar — We have seen quite a lot of these caterpillars recently and suspect they are falling from our poplar gum. Perhaps a Tussock Moth caterpillar.

A large wasp, probably Sceliphron formosum, foraging on macadamia leaves.

Orange cockroach — Adult Bush Cockroach, Ellipsidion humeralis, one of many native species

orange bug on leaf — Juvenile native cockroach, Ellipsidion humeralis

Cockroaches have such a bad reputation that the mere name makes people think the insect must be ugly, dirty and a pest. Not so: Wikipedia does spend most time on the pests but begins by noting that only about four species of 4500 worldwide are problematic. Our Bush Cockroach is no more ugly or dirty than a beetle, and its cousin from Western Queensland is very attractively coloured.

orange grasshopper — Immature Giant Grasshopper, Valanga irregularis, already quite big but still one or two moults away from fully-winged adulthood, on lemongrass

orange and brown butterfly — Australian Rustic, Cupha prosope, on pentas leaf

A beautiful species which doesn’t visit us very often – maybe a couple of times per year.

green spider with pink and white back — Flower spider, Diaea evanida, lurking with intent in a new-formed hibiscus leaf

This little spider pounced from this very retreat a day earlier to capture a tiger cranefly, as seen here.