What wonders we have on the Fleurieu Peninsula!! My friend who lives right in Willunga, sent me these pictures of the Paper Wasp (Polistes humilis) nest she found they were building right in her back yard on the pedestal of a stunning metal sea eagle sculpture she has there. She moved to within an inch of their nest to take macro photos and instead of attacking her ( which they will do if they feel threatened!) they merely all looked up with heads in unison when the "click " of her camera went off. How good was that!!, it reminded me of scenes in "miniscule"that delightful film clip we see sometimes before the evening news....
As you can see quite clearly here their hexagonal
chambers are made by chewing woody fibers mixed with saliva and left open and eggs are laid in this. When the young hatch they are fed on a diet of chewed up caterpillars. Unlike European wasps, they will not annoy humans by sitting on the picnic table and taking liberties with a lamb chop or the jam jar.I for one , am happy for the Paper Wasp to eat all the caterpillars they can find.Not that we seem to have had much bother with them this year, earwigs were worse...
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The other creature that lives in our sea around the Peninsula, is the Leafy Seadragon. His formal name is Phyodurus Eques and he belongs to the Sygnathidae family which are the Trumpet fish. I was as excited as my photographer friend when he told me that on his scuba diving expedition at Rapid Bay, he saw and photographed the dear, colourful creature in all its natural glory, they look breathtakingly beautiful on a photo, so what it must have been like to see it real and alive would be beyond description....I feel very privileged he sent me these photos and has allowed me to share them with you...hot off the press!!
I am not sure what the little fish is with him, and if anyone reading this ,knows, I would be pleased if you could post the name on the comment box at the bottom of this blog.And of course they are "hims" because the male of this species carry all the young. Wonder how the female of the species persuaded the male to take over all the responsibility of child rearing? Could we girls learn something from this?
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The fish is an Old Wife, Enoplosus Armatus.
ReplyDeleteThe dorsal fin spines contain a venom which can cause severe pain, so beware when approaching them.
Thank you for the information about the little fish, I thought it looked like an angel fish but Brian told me they are usually fresh water aquarium fish. Tineke
DeleteHello Tineke, thank you for emailing me the link to your blog. I loved your post about the paper wasps of course.
ReplyDeleteAnd how wonderful it is to have friends who will share their photos! I was just about to identify your black & silver stripey fish as a comment here when I saw another friend had already done it! But I'll put the link here for you to look at anyway:
http://www.ozanimals.com/Fish/Old-Wife/Enoplosus/armatus.html
Old wives are one of the most common fish around the area where I grew up, apart from leather jackets, but the old wives are easier to spot. So it's not surprising they get their photo taken at Rapid Bay. We (Joy & I) took the dogs for a long walk on the beach at Rapid Bay on Friday eve. A lovely way to cool down after a hot day. All the dogs swam around merrily, & frolicked & had the whole beach to run free! We found our brother & his friends fishing off the beach & catching lots of fish.