Like Lychee

The young of the moth I found on the ceiling of our verandah this morning are partial to Lychee leaves, as well as those of Longan, Rambutan, Tamarillo and various other tropical fruit trees.

 The caterpillar which is quite colourful gave the common name to the moth, Conspicuous Looper, Oxyodes tricolor but the moth likes to hide its colours which are on the rear wings, half black and bright orange, that you can just see peeping through. The fore wings have a span of about 40mm and are quite variable in pattern and colour .

The range of the moth is through south and south east Asia and  coastal  Queensland and NSW in Australia. As their preferred food trees are tropical to sub tropical fruits we are at the southern end of the range.

 

Aloe Aloe have a sip

An Eastern Spinebill visited one of our Aloes that is profusely flowering at present and spent some time visiting each of the flowering stalks having a sip at each.

 

Beautiful Texture

A moth that visited last night spent the day on the side of the house, under the shelter of the verandah.

Beautiful colours and texture enabled me to identify it quite quickly as a Textured Emerald  (or Common Brown Looper) moth Hypodoxa muscosaria  of the GEOMETRIDAE family.
However to be certain I disturbed it to enable a photo of the underside which has distinctive markings.

After the photo it was quite happy to go its place on the wall for the rest of the day.

This moth has a wingspan of between 30 to 40mm and is found along  eastern Australia.

A fuel stop

The number of butterflies around the garden is still high and one species that I see a lot is the Common Grass Yellow, Eurema hecabe but they are fast flyers flitting along close to the ground and not stopping long when they alight.

Today I was lucky to see one land on a flower to tale a sip of nectar before resuming flight and giving me enough time for a photo.

These butterflies are found mainly in the northern areas of Australia with their south eastern range to about the Sydney area.

Do not disturb

These little critters are and important part of the environment as they are busy visiting plants to feed on the nectar and at the same time pollinating the plant. They are also very busy finding food for their larvae,  caterpillars, aphids and other small insects. 

These are one of the paper wasp species, White Faced Brown Paper Wasp Ropalidia plebiana and smaller than their more well known relative Australian Paper Wasp Polistes humilis  but their sting is just as painful. Fortunately they are not aggressive and people generally are stung by inadvertently disturbing their nest.

Australian Paper Wasp Polistes humilis