Thank goodness somebody eats them

 

After a hiatus, I'm back. I guess the trick is to write short, achievable posts.

The bird baby season has just finished for Perth, and many of the spring youngsters have fledged from our garden. But one parent-chick pair is still lurking around - and that the black-faced cuckoo shrike (Coracina novaehollandiae).

They're strange birds. They fold their wings each and every time they land in some sort of odd display (Land. Fold wings over this way. Fold over the other way. Fold over the other way again.). And they have this strange, strangled, subtle call of Zeeee-ewwww. And they're curious and beady-eyed, but overlooked by most people because they don't really stand out as a strikingly unusual Australian bird (i.e. not brightly plumaged nor excessively and obtrusively noisy).

But they've taken to the shady copse of Acacia saligna I planted in the backard (called 'Saligna Grove') with gusto because this Acacia species is normally festooned with stinky Crusader bugs (Mictis profana: Coreidae). Sucking phloem sap and spreading a rust fungus and whatever mycoplasmas or viral pathogens, the hemipteran was reaching plague proportions, to the detriment of our shrubs.

A pair of furiously procreating Crusader bugs.

The stinky native bugs were causing a lot of damage to new growth and eventually to the whole plant, and it appeared that nobody was keen to eat them. Not even the hungry bee eaters would dare stick these vile-tasting things down their throats.

But salvation appeared in the form of a noisy, gurgling, baby black-faced cuckoo shrike. Attracted by their flapping among the Acacia saligna, we noted to our relief and delight that, at last, somebody ate the apparently distasteful Crusader bugs. Plucked fresh from the boughs of the acacia, wiped on a wire or branch, they're then swallowed with relish. Tuck in, we say! Help yourselves!. Don't stop at one!

The pale-faced youngster wants everything the parent captures.

The junior cuckoo shrike catches and eats a Crusader bug

Who's eating me trees?

A chafer at my tree

Liparetrus sp -(Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae). Spring beetles.

This scarab chafer beetle (cockchafer if you must) is pictured eating my treasured front verge saplings of illyarrie (Eucalyptus erythrocorys) and Eucalyptus todtiana. They emerged en masse from burrows in the sandy soil of the Swan Coastal Plain in late spring (October), literally swarming out of the ground after the grubs have lain for a year or two. 

Once up and out as adults, they showed a remarkable ability to defoliate my native eucalypt saplings. It is frighteningly impressive how much leaf biomass can disappear within days as 'undreds of the chafers swarm over that plants. And they do swarm. And persist in eating the trees despite constant shakes and hosing down the plants. These are my saplings that I planted on the front verge, and they have only really started to take off, so you can imagine my horror as they disappeared over days. I received some advice on how to manage them, which involved lights, hosings, shakings and tolerance.

Anyways - to cut the long story short - I requested the help of an entomologist friend who became rather excited at these critters. Yes, they were a chafer beetle (as I had gussed), in the genus Liparetrus and could not be identitifed to species level. They were native and possibly even an endemic to the Swan Coastal Plain or SW Western Australian region. Yes, spring beetles are considered pests and usually sprayed when they occur in gum plantations - but these were local critters in small numbers in suburban gardens.  I was lucky that some beetle work was being currently underway at the WA Museum, so my critters attracted some interest.

Looks like we will have to resort to DNA sequencing and some good, old fashioned taxonomic work to get a species name on this critter. Yes - that involves counting setae.  I'm really impressed that common old suburbia continues to turn up undescribed species. I just have to plant some more local eucalypts to reduce the damage on my street trees and to support these (possibly endemic?) species in an region subject to huge amounts of bushland clearing.