Showing posts with label local insects and animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local insects and animals. Show all posts

Friday 7 February 2014

Local insects and animals- Cicadas


It's the beginning of autumn (planetarily speaking) so the cicadas have gone, but I keep finding shells on the trees around the property and it brings the hot days of summer to mind every time. I love to hear the songs of millions of cicadas in the trees on a hot summer day; it reminds me that every season is short lived.
A while ago I found a recording of crickets slowed down (on the net of course) and it sounded like a choir, I wonder what cicadas slowed down sounds like?






There are about 2000 species of cicada world wide; 220 of them are found in Australia. They have a really interesting and mysterious life cycle; spending years (up to 14 in some species) living underground sucking sap from the roots of plants and emerging in the summer,when sap flow is high, to sing, mate and be eaten by hungry birds and animals. They seem to be emerging earlier each year to me and an article in the Blue Mountains Gazette backs up that observation, stating that planetary warming is resulting in big changes in insect behavior.
Around our humpy the emergence of cicadas in the early summer coincides with the hatching of insect eating birds like the black faced cuckoo shrike, butcher bird, magpie, satin bower birds and many others. The blue faced honey eater gets it's food from nectar plants (as the name suggests) and fruit for most of the year but just before they lay eggs they eat large amounts of insects (to boost their protein levels, which boosts fertility) and they feed their young on insects too. The emergence of the cicadas fits in neatly with the beginning of the blue faced honey eater breeding season. I have also seen (only once) a koala eating cicadas like they were chips (absentmindedly but constantly feeding them into his mouth). I think that cicadas provide a huge boost in protein for many birds and animals at a time when they have young or are breeding and that makes them a very important part of the ecosystem.

Interesting cicada facts

Cicada life cycle

I took these photos this summer while working around the humpy.

An emerging adult, not yet dry


The adult just emerging from the shell, looks like an alien doesn't it.



What interesting insects have you found?

Sunday 2 February 2014

local insects and animals- Teal'c, the Black-faced cuckoo shrike


This week a local family bought us a baby bird; he had fallen or flown from a high nest and was being menaced by their dog. If he had been fully feathered we would have advised them to leave him in a high tree to be reclaimed by his (no doubt worried) parents. However, he is not yet fully feathered and has made no attempt to fly in the three days he has been here.

Meet Teal'c; the Black-faced cuckoo shrike


Teal'c is a Black-face cuckoo shrike , who are not cuckoos or shrikes. They are omnivorous birds, although they mostly eat insects. They live in bush country, suburban garden and farm land.
This little boy (we think), is currently in a cage through the day and in a heated box at night. He is being fed on balls of insectivore mix and meal worms along with any stinging flies, beetles and worms we can find. He is fed 'on demand'; as his cage is in the house, we can hear him call us for food. He is a delightful little boy who will eventually grow up and join the local populations that frequent the bush around our house.



Saturday 1 February 2014

local insects and animals- Black flower wasps


Today I decided to add a new section to my blog; local insects and animals. Every so often we find an unknown insect or animal around the humpy and it causes a rush towards the book shelves and the computer to find out what it is and what it does. From now on I will add the results of these research missions to my blog (partly so I have a record of what we have already researched, as I suspect we have looked up some things more than once and forgotten the results).

Today's bug is.......the black flower wasp

My youngest daughter captured this photo of a black flower wasp on the lantana.



Haven't they got pretty wings.
My youngest daughter was fascinated by the lovely blue colour of the wings and by their solitary nature. According to the CSIRO these wasps are solitary wasps who are responsible for pollinating many Australian natives (and a few exotics too) they lay eggs in caterpillars to reproduce. So many Australian native insects tend to be solitary, I wonder why they have evolved this way?
Given the worrying drop in the bee population of the world, I think it is important to encourage other insects who are capable of pollinating our food crops, or we may find ourselves very hungry. While the black flower wasp is known to pollinate mostly native plants, there is so little research on them that they may also play a large part in pollinating high nectar food plants like pumpkin, melons and marrow.
They enjoy high nectar plants and undisturbed mulched areas, so make sure you have some of this habitat in your garden and you will have these delightful wasps to entertain you and help control Caterpillar populations.