Another stinky!

 

This sting bug dropped in on me yesterday. He must have been on his best behaviour as I didn't smell a thing. He's a Bronze-Orange Stink Bug (Musgraveia sulciventris).

A while ago I reported on one of his relatives, a  Toad Stink Bug: earlier stinky post

Stinky

He was on the front door this evening. I initially made him welcome. Then I looked him up, and he's a Toad Stink Bug (Platycoris (Hypogomphus) bipunctatus).

So I think I'll tell him to go away!

Spider wasp1 : Huntsman spider 0

And I think that's the usual score. I encountered this scene near the beach this morning. 

An orange spider wasp was dragging its zombiefied huntsman spider victim towards its lair. It's big and it's a striking orange and black colour. It paralyses its victim, and then entombs it after laying an egg on it. The hatched pupa goes on to feed on the spider s it grows up.

I was intrigued to find this story about this very activity in the London Sun, no less. If you want a good scary Australian spider story, or snake story, or maybe a surfing duck or two, check out the UK media! It's often all they want from Australia: London Sun article

Recent visitors 2: privet hawk moth

 

Recent visitors 1: Dragonfly

 

Assassin!

I spotted a slightly unusual bug on a wall the other day. Looked unusual to me anyway, though I'll probably see them everywhere now, having identified it. It's a common assassin bug, Pristhesancus plagipennis. It assassinates other insects, like honey bees apparently, and sucks the blood of bigger animals too, including ours.

More about it on this excellent bug identification site:
Brisbane bug ID site

Fiery end

This dragonfly came to an untimely end on the front sun room floor, and was being dismantled by a small army of ants.

I think he's a Fiery Skimmer (Orthetrum villosovittatum), and he's a young male. Funny thing is, the older males seemingly have bright red tails, and are very distinctive. I don't recall ever seeing any of them around with bright red tails. Maybe the ants always get them before they grow up!

Antlion

When we leave the porch light on at night, a collection of familiar and not-so-familiar insects usually turns up to welcome us back. I read that there's been a dramatic drop in the number of insects all around the world. Dramatic and very worrying. But there's still a few in our porch.

Here's one from last night. I was a bit stumped at first, but it's an antlion lacewing, no less (Glenoleon falsus). Its larvae are predators with long jaws and pincers. They live in the ground and build sandtraps into which other insects fall and get eaten.

I used to play a computer game called SimAnt.My ants were always being eaten by antlions.

Lesser known museums No. 137: the Macleay Museum

Sydney's full of funny little niche museums. For example, there's the Army Artillery Museum, the Scout Museum, the Tennis Museum, Fort Denison, Hyde Park Barracks, the Justice and Police Museum, the Museum of Australian Currency Notes, the Museum of Freemasonry, the Susannah Place Museum, the Bus Museum, the Harbour Bridge Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Sydney Mint, Sydney Observatory, the Tramway Museum, and the White Rabbit Gallery, to name but a few.

Two such examples are located at Sydney University. There's the Nicholson Museum ('largest collection of antiquities in the southern hemisphere'), and there's the Macleay Museum, which I popped into last week for the first time.


This one is all about natural history, but it's also part of our history. It's got enormous collections of all sorts of things, many dating from before Australia's European settlement. Especially insects, but also mammals (including a Tasmanian Tiger skeleton), ethnography (New Guinea mainly), historic photographs, and scientific instruments (including the University's first primitive computer). Most of the collection, especially the most fragile historic things, are kept deep in the bowels of the building somewhere, but the nicely sized gallery that's open to the public has a beautifully traditional museum-like feel to it, and a sufficient collection of all this stuff to keep you enthralled for a good hour or two.

 The story of the Macleay family is quite interesting. Alexander Macleay was the Colonial Secretary in the early 19th century, and was a prolific gentleman collector who brought his enormous collection with him. Two subsequent generations of Macleays kept up the tradition, did useful work in classification, met Charles Darwin, the lot. When the collection outgrew their house (the fine Elizabeth Bay House - a heritage house and museum in its own right, which I've yet to visit), they donated it all to the university.