In the bush nearby you can often see sections of sandstone that have clusters of regular sized holes around 10mm in diameter. Sometimes these pieces of sandstone are on a walking track where they get worn down to show the internal paths these holes take. I have a distant hazy memory of being told the holes are made by native bees. A bit of the old web searching brought up some more information!

It was over a year ago that I first saw this flying insect that had caught a large spider and was dragging it off somewhere presumably to eat. I’d never seen anything like it and I spent a while researching to try and work out what it was. At the time I thought it was a robber fly but now I think it’s a spider wasp! Robber flys do indeed prey on some spiders and other insects but the images really dont look anything like what I’d seen. The spider wasp is a much closer match. I’ve seen a few now, here’s some pictures of a smaller spider wasp with another decent sized spider. This particular one was struggling a bit with it’s prey. It even tried to fly a bit and only just managed it. Looking at the picture the spider could easily weigh more than the wasp! Spider wasps are known to chop off the legs of the spider to make it easier to carry. All the ones I’ve seen the spiders are missing their legs. Nature is brutal!

[update] – When I wrote this I thought the creature was a robber fly, now I think it’s a spider wasp. Here’s something you don’t see every day, a large fly like creature walking along carrying a sizeable spider underneath it! Now that’s a prey reversal! A bit like seeing a huge rat hauling a dead cat somewhere. The fly was black, about 4cm in length with long legs that allowed it to carry the spider underneath it and still walk easily. The one I saw was on a mission to get somewhere, it walked quickly over the pavement for about 4m and then climbed a wall before I lost it. It had wings but didn’t try to fly, maybe the spider was too heavy for it. The spider was slightly longer than the fly and looked bulkier, all the spiders legs were gone and it was being carried inverted with it’s abdomen towards the front of the fly.

They’re back, and they still have an appetite for destruction! Every year about this time the black cockies visit for a day or two, tear up the Banksia trees in our yard then leave.

Black Cockie tearing up a Banksia

Sulphur Crested Cockies are here in abundance year round, Black Cockies only visit for a few days per year, sometimes I miss them altogether. Yellow tailed black cockatoos are larger than their sulphur crested cousins, they have a louder and more piercing shriek too. A few days before I saw the black cockies this year I heard a chilling shriek in the valley after dark, for a moment I thought it sounded like a person in distress, but I figured it was more animal like. After I saw the Cockies I now think that’s what it was.

Eucalyptus piperita

“A small graceful tree to 15m high, but sometimes much taller” NOPS p.38

During the big storms a few weeks ago I was lying in bed at around 11pm just about to ready to go to sleep when a loud and prolonged cracking sound started coming from just outside the bedroom. I knew right away that the large Sydney Peppermint gum in the back yard was falling over! I jumped up and tried to get to the window but it was pitch dark and storming, I couldn’t a thing. As the cracking continued I was terrified it was going to fall on the house, luckily it went the other way and ended up taking out a sizeable swath of bush and other trees as it came down. Phew!

Tiliqua scincoides

Here’s an animal that every Australian knows. The Blue Tongue Lizard is common in bushland and suburban backyards of Eastern Australia, but even the familiar has the capacity to surprise as I found out with this one! The family was visiting friends in Gerringong 1 1/2 hrs south of Sydney. The kids came running in from the back yard saying they they had found a snake. We went out to take a look and found what was clearly a Blue Tongue Lizard half obscured under the back step. It’s legs were tucked under it’s body so it’s understandable that the kids though it was a snake. There was a small crowd of us watching it when it started to slowly lumber out of it’s hiding spot. The lizard seemed quite fat even for a Blue Tongue which I commented on, then all of a sudden a fully formed baby lizard popped out from the underside! It was a mum giving birth!

Eupoecila australasiae

I was working in the yard when Jess called me over to see a beetle she’d found. I was a bit reluctant to stop work but she convinced me “c’mon dad, you’ll love it!” She was right. With a quick search this beetle was simple to identify as a Fiddler Beetle.

Fiddler beetle of Eastern Australia. This one’s name is Lightning McFiddler

Fiddler Beetles are native to Australia, they are found all the way up and down the east coast. The first thing you notice about them is their appearance, they are black with a striking pattern of yellow or green markings that look like they have been applied as part of a carefully thought out tribal design. The one Jess found had green markings. Not sure if it was male or female, often in nature the males are more visually striking than the ladies but I couldn’t find any sources that distinguished between the two in appearance. Fiddler beetles live in heathland, eucalypt forest and suburban parks and yards. They lay their eggs in rotting logs or damp soil. After hatching the grubs eat wood until they are ready to emerge as adult beetles in the early summer.

Stop the presses right. Hah, well I still think this is pretty cool. The last time the cycad sprouted new leaves was almost 4 years ago. Cycads are ancient plants that in some ways resemble palms or tree ferns. They have tough evergreen leaves that grow in a fan like arrangement from a single central trunk. Cycads are slow growing and can live for a long time, up to 1000 years. They are thought to have been much more widespread in the ancient past 100’s of millions of years ago, today they are still found around the world in tropical and subtropical climates. The new shoots emerge at the top of the plant like a ring of spears from the central ball of coralloid roots. They grow very rapidly, up to 20cm per day for the first week after they emerge. As the spears emerge the leaves are each individually coiled up tight in intricate spirals. At first the leaves are very soft and flexible, and the undersides are covered with a film of fine hair/fur. Once they unroll the hair is lost and the leaves become stiff and hard.