Meet the Beetles

Just a few nice finds from Sunday afternoon and a break from weekend-long bathroom redecoration.

The is the Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus oculatus ) and it doesnt take a great deal of work to ID it. Those huge eye spots on the  pronotum (behind the head) and the overall large size make it unmistakeable. My glasses are in the picture here for an idea of scale. When this click beetle clicks you really hear it!

 And a second impressive beetle, though not as large, is the Green June Bug (Cotinis nitida). Still it is around 3/4" long and the colouring is wonderful. Only the one snap in this case as it was off again before I got a second chance.

It is a member of the family Scarabaeidae, the scarab beetles. On a less dramatic scale is this Bug nymph yet to be indentified as to species. You would think its fairly easy with this patterning and with those white stripes on the legs and antennae. But there are so many to choose from and they change so radically as they grow and moult.

I'll let you know.

Its a Brown Marmorted Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys)

And finally... just a nice sharp headshot of jumping spider Hentzia palmarum. The big macro lens has such a shallow depth of field that the rest of her was pretty much a blur. But this was nice and crisp and really shows of those massive fangs (well massive to scale, its a tiny spider) and the eye arrangement.

As to my title, Meet the Beetles I know Id rather this one;

Than actually  Meet the Beatles.

Oh yes RIP the 2 Luna Moth pupae neither of which emerged after I rescued them from the pond as caterpillars. everything seemed to be going well but sometime over the weekend they ceased their noisy wriggling and have been sadly silent since. I'm not sure what went wrong. But its been a bad year so far for our caterpillars. The first batch of  Black Swallowtails back in the spring mysteriously disappeared over the course of a couple of days. They all vanished more or less in the course of a day when only around 5 days old. They seem to have fallen victim to either birds or wasps. Its the first time I've had this happen though. Normally the vast majority make it through to butterflyhood. Its a bummer and now we have the Luna failure too