Epsilons garden and the insects of inland CA

[epsilon]

Thought I would start putting these up for all that are/were interested. I must say that the figuring out how to take macro photos on the galaxy has been an amazing discovery.

Second to final photo
the most recent visitor to the garden was this interesting guy. From a distance he appears to be a tarantula hawk. But on closer inspection I found him to be some species of moth , the odd thing is that I can't a description for it on my Audubon butterfly's and moths app, after some searching I found it to be part of the grape leaf skeletonizers : Harrisina metallica

Gaston

[Dak]

Your camera does great micro shots! This is such a great time of year to have a camera handy in the garden.

We have narrowleaf milkweed here on our property, do we get the cool monarchs that allegedly love milkweek? No, we get tarantula hawks. First year I saw them I tried to get a picture, but got the feeling I was annoying it somehow, getting too close, snapped a few flurry pics and then found out what it was, luckily it's not aggressive, but it does have one of the most painful stings in the world.

[RootLoops]

awesome!!!

[epsilon]

So after spotting a mimic the other day, guess who was visiting after last nights rain storm? He measure about 2.5 " long by about 1.5 off the ground. And you could see him as he was cruising across the yard. This was pretty neat, next time there's one around I'll low crawl try to get a closer picture.

20140426_115058.jpg

[Tracydr]

I just watched a video on these wasps. Crazy!

[coronabarb]

Boy my chickens loved those green fruit beetle grubs! Heck, my crazy dogs would even eat them if I tossed em to them.

[Vespertino]

Love the pic of that spider I rescued a wolf spider that wandered into my house last week. Hubs wanted to kill it but I said noooooo! So I scooped him up and put him in the garden to eat bugs that might be naughty.

[coronabarb]

I rescue spiders too. They are generally good gardening companions to have around. Really hated all the black widows (and now brown widows) in So Cal. Haven't seen any here in So Oregon yet but I suppose it is possible.

[epsilon]

I try to rescue all spider except the widows, they get instantly terminated. Two years ago we got overrun with brown widow it was really bizarre.

[coronabarb]

My son read about the appearance of the brown widows a few yrs back and then started seeing more of them than the blacks. I think he said the browns displace them?

[epsilon]

CoronaBarb

I think it has something to do with them being more adaptable to the temperature swings that we've been having out here. Also I think unlike the black widows, they seem to fall outside of the black widow's predators radars so I think they're far less impacted by predation.

[epsilon]

Today's bug is the Assasin Bug! . I was poking at my passion fruit vine and noticed the bristles and bright colors, it freaked me out for a second before I realized what I was looking at, interestingly enough, we usually get green ones.

[Delerium]

Have you spotted any Harlequin bugs.. I will post one if i haven't seen any.

[epsilon]

If by Harlequin bug you mean these guys http://lh3.ggpht.com/Dej2rViU8tGtGbC...2Fx_ax5c=s580?

Then yes I did see one last week. It climbed up the fence and then took off into the breeze before I could reach for my phone, and my flip flop.

[epsilon]

Found this guy today helping out my Gf's mother's friend.

I think this one is a western tiger Swallowtail. At first glance I thought it was a huge Bird crap