Bugz!

Now anyone who knows me would say I'm not the type to enjoy a bug, but they would be wrong!

Since moving to our new home I have been lost every night in the wonderland that is our lush garden. It has some of the most amazing native NZ flowers, plants and trees and I am a little ashamed to say I haven't had much time for house work as I have been too busy going round the garden in awe!!

So I took some snaps of the little critters. I then found a fantastic website called Landcare Research which shows you photos of the actual bug and a description of what they do etc. So here is what I found so far:

This is a shell of a Chorus Cicada called the Cicada Nymphs. Looks pretty horrible but it is literally the shell, you can find these around the garden just randomly stuck to things! See below for what came out of the shell!

This is a Chorus Cicada, pretty standard insect in New Zealand. This guy was really big at roughly 2 inches long, and was making the most amazing sound. The sound of summer here is hearing these guys make the clicking noise (similar I suppose to how you would imagine the Australian outback to sound!). You can see the shell above - much prettier now I think!

Any New Zealander knows about these little guys - Ants. Some homes are plagued by these little guys, luckily for us they are happy outside on the decking or on the trees. The above photo was taken on one of the trees, I could trace them back over a long distance and the only seem to come out at a certain time of the night, go up and down this tree for hours and then disappear again!

Now this is an interesting one. I could see these all around the garden but couldn't work out what they were...and now I know! They are egg cases for the NZ Praying Mantis! All the cases were open so they were out but that would have been great to see all the little things emerge! Still not seen an actual Praying Mantis yet though.


This is one of my most favourite photos. It shows funny little bugs that have hairs growing from their bottoms, they are the cutest little things and if you touch them they can really jump! Soo cute but they are a garden pest sadly. They are called Passionvine Hoppers (Immature). On this photo you can see a moth type creature too - see below!

These cute little moths are actually the grown up Passionvine Hopper. As you can see above they gather all together and cause destruction to my plants!!

I'm sure most people recognise this guy! Yep, its a standard House Fly. For some reason he was just sitting there in the tree not up to much. The flies are horrendously annoying and cheeky over here, they land on you and don't let go even if you shake yourself inside out trying to get them off!

This little blue/green thing that is with the Passionvine Hopper is (and I think) a Steely Blue Ladybird. The colour was amazing and looked very much like it was made of Steel!

I met this guy today, as I walked up to the garage he was just making his way there too! A really big bug, I noticed him straight away and must have been 3 inches long, very bright colours and looked like he didn't want to be messed with!

So are you itchy yet??

I will no doubt see some more on my travels of the garden and take more photos, for now though I will leave you with this image. Its something I haven't wanted to know anymore about thank you!!!