2016 June 9

 

   Gordon Hart writes:  I am enclosing a picture of a Western Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus melanops).  I almost did not see it on the black asphalt of our Highlands driveway, but I saw the two false “eyes”. It is quite large, about 30 mm.

 

Western Eyed Click Beetle Alaus melanops (Col.: Elateridae)  Gordon Hart

 

 

   Louise Rushton found a caterpillar which we couldn’t identify, but she kept an eye on it, and a yellow maggot of a parasitoidal tachinid fly emerged from the now-dead caterpillar.

 

Tachinid fly maggot (Dip.: Tachinidae)  Louise Rushton

 

   In the June 7 posting, we mentioned that Gordon Hart had photographed a beetle and some “tiny insects” on a daisy at Currie Creek Road.  Scott Gilmore has identified the beetle for us as Lepturobosca chrysocoma (thank you, Scott), so we now show Gordon’s photograph.  I challenged Scott to go further and to see if he could identify one of the “tiny” insects, which was also a beetle.  This probably needs close examination of the insect with a lens, but Scott rose to the challenge, and he believes that the little beetle is probably Bruchidius villosus.  Then there is a very tiny insect indeed on one of the petals on the right hand side. Jeremy Tatum is pretty sure that this is a parasitoidal wasp of the hymenopteran superfamily Chalcidoidea.  These insects insert several (sometimes many) eggs inside the egg of another insect (such as a moth egg), and these several eggs hatch into several grubs, which grow and spend their entire immature lives (larvae and pupae) inside the egg of the host insect.

 

  and  Bruchidius villosus (Col.: Chrysomelidae)

Gordon Hart.

 

   Jeff Gaskin writes:  Today, June 09, I went with Rick Schortinghuis to look for Field Crescents on Stelly’s Cross Road, and almost immediately we started seeing them.  We counted at least five and there probably were more. Also, there were a few European or Essex Skippers in the grass.