Insects - Autumn

Garden Spider

Found everywhere at this time of year, especially it seems in my old Landrover! These striped legged spiders have a cross shaped set of markings on their abdomen. The females are nearly twice the size of the males at between half an inch to an inch (12 to 24 millimetres). Their webs have a gentle spiral leading to the centre where they await their prey of such morsels as flies and wasps
Top Spots
Virtually anywhere, where there is something to catch. With dawn being later each morning, and the sun being at a lower angle when most folk set off to work or school, their webs stand out clearly in the early morning

Harvest Spider

Amongst their more esoteric resting places, just why do these large spiders choose your bath as a resting spot at night? Whilst not a true spiders in the biological classification scheme of things, they do a good impression of looking like one. The key difference is that their body is in one part, and not the two distinct parts (cephalothorax [front bit] and abdomen [back bit]) that their arachnid cousins have. Often reaching a good two to three inches (50 to 75 millimetres), or at least it looks like that when you don’t want to come upon one, they feed on insect larvae and mites. It could be suggested that they end up in the bath whilst looking for water droplets, but why come inside when life is risky that way?
Top Spots
Now if you can’t find one of these invaders in the bathroom first thing in the morning, try looking under larger stones, in older dry-ish vegetation (the base of a hedge), or under a manhole cover. Experience suggests the heavier the manhole (and thus harder to put down) the greater the chance of having a whopper use your arm as an escape route

Humming Bird Hawkmoth

If you’re about during a warm Indian summer day, the day part of it being what makes the Humming Bird Hawkmoth strange, you could come across this fantastic moth. With a wing span of nearly 2 inches (50 millimetres) this monster moth, hovers when feeding, extracting the nectar from flowers via a very long probiscus. That’s a long mouth. As its name suggests it makes a humming noise in flight, which is a good way of telling that one might be near. It’s a fan of Buddleia and Nicotiana, the former being a common sight in gardens, and more urban hedgerows. And most amazingly it is migratory, moving to Southern Europe and Africa during the winter
Top Spots
Our sighting this year was in a garden in Queen Adelaide, but hang around those Buddleia long enough and you might just get to see one