Hey, it is Halloween today!...

So, lets continue with the horror stories of butterflies ending their short lives in dramatic circumstancies...
How about butterflies lured to electrical lights and fried alive by the heat of the lights and/or stuck behind the wire screens...The one on the left is likely a male Evening Brown (Melanitis leda), here the underside is seen, in it's wet-season form, I believe. The one on the right side is probably the same species and also a male but seen from the top side, therefore darker.

(The above picture has been taken in the Botanical Garden in Harvey Bay, last August.)

Or alternatively, imagine yourself (if you can) being fed to a young rainbow bee-eater...

Gulp...

(I spotted these butterfly-eating rainbow bee-eaters locally, at Ginnindera Creek in Canberra.)
The butterfly is most likely Vanessa kerhawi (Australian Painted Lady).

And here (below) is one more photo from Cape Hillsborough of unlucky entanglement in the spider web, yet different species of butterfly; nature is so often both beautifull and cruel at the same time...
As for the name of the butterfly it seems to be one of the Bush-browns, perhaps Dingy Bush-brown (Mycalesis perseus)? But what surprises me is that it is a wet-season form even although this photo was taken at the end of July...I am not too sure how to explain it, could it be that the poor butterfly was hanging there for several months?

Butterflies don't pay taxes, but...

It is this time of year again, the deadline for submitting one's tax return is approaching, which reminds me the old saying along the lines: "There are only two things certain in our lives, these are a.) having to pay taxes and b.) our death..."

Butterflies do not pay taxes, but they are certainly not spared from death. When visiting Cape Hillsborough during my last holiday, on a single day (29th of July 2010)  I photographed several various ways in which death can meet a single species of butterfly, Evening Brown (Melanitis leda)...

Be it by drowning, getting stuck in the spider web or being consumed by other insects, perhaps by green ants (as shown in the photo above), in one form or another, death  will certainly come...

"insect"

A proof to myself that my knowledge of insects is gradually growing; I took this photo 2 years ago and gave it a very simple title "an insect"; at least now I would title it "an Ichneumon wasp", I still do not know the exact name of the species, but there is some progress being made, I think....
Do they bite people?...
This one was photographed at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, at Camel's Hump trail.

mini "Pharaoh's Tomb" found underground...

After a large Eucalyptus Mannifera tree has been removed from my garden several weeks ago I finally decided to plant something else in that spot, so I started digging... Some roots of the Eucalyptus tree still needed to be removed and inside one of them there was a surprise: a hollow chamber, size of a small matchbox (but roundish) with an interesting large insect in it. It is a creamy-white pupa of a longhorn beetle (also known as longicorn), and it is alive. I decided to call him Pharaoh (click to enlage photo below). The walls of the chamber were smooth, probably because it wiggles his back in all directions from time to time, maybe by doing that over many months or years (?) it smoothened (or perhaps even enlarged?) the chamber...Or maybe it eats the wood?

I placed Pharaoh and fragment of his root chamber in a glass terrarium with some soil, but whether he will survive and for how long, time will tell...

 I have no idea what he eats if anything, perhaps juices of the tree? But now that the tree has been removed he is doomed, unless he is almost ready to emerge as an adult longhorn...I give him 10% chances for survival.
On the other hand, if he goes on and lives for lets say 5 more years like that (unlikely?) then it is quite a commitment on my part, isn't it? hmm...I have no idea what to think...

And maybe what seemed like an elongated chamber was actually a tunnel being built to the surface...? Maybe he is ready to become an adult ? I will try to protect him from drying out and will observe him.

one day later

His Greenness looks somewhat pale today, perhaps changed his color a bit towards whitish-yellow, and he is not moving anymore...

He looks very peaceful, like an angel sleeping on a pillow made out of clouds...
I am not so sure anymore, is he a common pest? and so angelical at the same time?...
And if he turns out to be a common pest what will I do with him?
Is he going to be a night moth perhaps?
Still a few days to think about it...

The Emperor's new exquisite clothing, made out of fine 100% organic silk

His majesty Greenness has got a new robe, made out of white silk, I have found it this morning, how do you like it...?  (Click on the image below to see very intricate details.)
He is still weaving it, so the robe is not finished yet, will post more pictures showing his progress...

house in the mailbox, in the suburbs

I have built a "house" for the leaf-cutter bees in some old disused metal mailbox (found in a water drain after heavy rains sometime ago). The house consists of a bundle of  tightly put next to each other cut bare stems of hemlock (Conium maculatum), which is a weed often found along the streams  and wetlands here in Canberra. The mailbox still has a sticker "No junk mail please" on it...
(I also added rolls of cardboard at the top, to fill out the gaps (as I did not have enough hemlock stems), these are made out of the inner parts of toilet paper rolls, one inside the other.)
I wonder whether I will get any tenants this summer...

leaf cutter bees already active

I am finding traces of activity of leaf cutter bees, such as this one here, in leaf of Abelia.

Ichneumon wasp

One more photo of the same wasp as shown recently (seen here on the top of my pen).
It is female, judging from white fragments in the middle of the antennas...
Has been released back into my garden...

Inspecting the crime scene...

The remnant of the pupa:

Please note that instead of the long crack along the axis (which would be typical if the moth has emerged normally) there is a top part of pupa missing, presumably the culprit wasp emerges from the top part and not sideways like the moth would...

parasitoid wasp?

About 1 month ago or so I have found a small pupa hanging on a silk thread in my garden under the rim of a plastic gardening pot. I assumed it belongs to some lepidoptera...

But what has emerged from it today was not a butterfly nor a moth, to my great surprise....
It is a wasp (Ichneumon wasp), I assume it simply/gradually ate all the pupa except it's "shell" and then emerged as an adult ("hiperactive") wasp! (Call Crime Scene Investigators now...)

side view

And one more shot; his/or her? Majesty Greenness...

A very hungry caterpillar indeed, eating healthy stuff all the time...

green larva eating parsley leaves

Discovered today. Will observe. Probably a pest moth...

Pink seductress: Oenochroma vinaria

Common name: Pink Bellied Moth
(I will call her Penelope.)
The interesting detail in this photo is the pheromone gland at the end of her body. She is trying to attract males with a special chemical cocktail. Human beings can not smell it (or I couldn't at least...)
Pink seductress. Sitting pretty and waiting. And the males have to fly upwind, in the direction of her smell...