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Spring starting at Balyang

September 1, 2016 by Jade Craven Leave a Comment

It was mums birthday on the weekend. There was just one thing she wanted to do for the day: go looking for Pokemon.

I hate Pokemon. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to look for more examples of flora along the Barwon River.

It turns out I suck at finding and identify flora. And, because I was trying to focus on too many things, I didn’t see that many bugs. Until mum had finished with looking for Pokemon. We were starting to walk back when we got distracted by some pretty leaves.

We found some ones that had obviously been impacted by, well, something. There was discolouration and galls, and possible something tiny that had been eating through this leaf.+

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Bugs

Mum annoyed me this past weekend. She has a better eye for bugs than I do. She noticed this gold spider and was so entranced by it. I saw a lot of spiders on Sunday, and some of the photos turned out decent 🙂

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Mum found the above spider. She was fascinated by how gold it is and how it seemed to reflect the suns rays. Turns out it belongs the the Simaethula genus, which is actually quite common in suburban gardens. D’oh! We thought we’d found something nifty.

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The above spider is common but we were more fascinated by how it was walking over the gum leaf skeletonizer eggs. I don’t think it was eating them but you can also see what looks like web over the photo. Haven’t seen that again, despite looking.

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Had to get a lot of photos of these guys. They were everywhere, and in varying sizes. It was at this point where I realized that I’m actually making a lot of progress with nature, I’m starting to remember animals I saw last spring. Even if I have to google the name when I get home.

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According to Bowerbird, above is “an acacia leaf beetle larva. Probably the fireblight beetle, Peltoschema orphana which is very common this season. It feeds on silver wattle. Following good winter rains this will be an excellent season for wildlife.”

That was completed unexpected. I assumed it was a sawfly larvae and just moved on, as Seth wanted to move to t a different area.

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An amphipod.

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Pillbugs, not slaters.

~

It was a good little trip, highlighting the start of the season. Can’t wait to see what else we find.

Filed Under: Barwon River, Geelong

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