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Murgantia histrionica

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Murgantia histrionica

I had seen adult harlequin bugs* before, but never the nymph stage. Both life stages are a major pest of cabbage and related brassica crops, feeding on the stems and leaves with their piercing-sucking mouthparts. That didn’t seem to be happening on the bladderpods today, as far as I could see. But who knows that those sneaky little mouth-straws are doing!

*This is different from the insect known in Australia as a harlequin bug, Dindymus versicolor.

Phloeodes diabolicus

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Liberty Canyon

I first learned about diabolical ironclad beetles a week or so ago, when K found one in the backyard. It’s an extremely cool critter: it is flightless and has a remarkably long adult lifespan of eight years, compared to weeks or months for most adult beetles. It also has an incredibly tough exoskeleton, able to bear pressure of 40,000 times its body weight (thus, the ‘ironclad’ moniker). I was pretty excited to see a whole bunch of them today! It was also a thrill to encounter a skunk moseying down the track in broad daylight. He raised his tail a few times but decided not to spray us (whew!).