MONDAY NIGHT

Hello,

On Monday night me and a good friend Steve went to the board walk over in Hillcrest (Hamilton East) North Island, New Zealand. We got there at about 9 p.m., and decided to go left instead of right, we have never been left as it has been fenced off for quite some time.

There were a lot of small grass type bushes with a load of insects and 100s of nursery web spiders sitting all over the bits of grass it was quite mind blowing to see so many.


                                        NURSEY WEB SPIDERS



Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on a grass type plant

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor)



There must have been a really good food source that lived on these plants, as the nursery web spiders were all over them.
I thought I’d take the chance to get some nice body ID shots, since they stood out so nicely on the green plants, you don’t often get a chance to get nice shots of them on green plants as they normally run before you can get close.

Male Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on grassy type plant

Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor)

another angle


The Nursery web spiders just seemed to be on every plant we looked at, ranging in different colours and sizes.


Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) with prey

a face on angle


Young Female Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on the end of a grass type plant


Medium size Nursery web spider (Dolomedes minor) sitting on a leaf, only managed to get the one shot before she jumped and ran off



                                                                 WETA'S


As we looked into these plants and came across more of these types of plants we started to find a large range of different types of insects, but there was one insect that should out from the rest, what was the tree Weta (Hemideina species). We started to see heaps of them, males and females. Most times when we go to the board walk we are lucky to see maybe one, but this time we found a lovely big female. Her body length would have been about 5cm. We haven’t come across one quite as big as this girl so it was quite exciting.


Female Tree Weta (Hemideina species) sitting on a grass type plant

I tried to get some nice shots of her on my hand to show the size of her, but sadly the shots came out a bit blurry. However, I did manage to get a nice shot of her sitting between my fingers.



Not long after that I found another 3 tree wetas sitting on the one plant- 2 males and one female. I assume there was a bit of a mating game going on between the two males.

Male Tree Weta (Hemideina species) sitting on a small flax type bush

Another angle of the Male Tree Weta (Hemideina species)



                                                                 SPIDERS
                                                  TWO SPINED SPIDERS



We found a large range of different species of spiders. Here are a few of the interesting spiders we came across.

There was a small dried up creek bed in the middle of the plants, so I pushed my way though into the middle and found a Female Two Spin Spider (Poecilopachys australasiae) hanging from a small branch.

Female two spined spider (Poecilopachys australasiae)


I always find these spiders hard to photograph as they have a strangely shaped abdomen, and the colours are very unusual, making exposure a little difficult. When we were photographing we saw a much smaller one, at first we thought it was a baby spiderling, but as I was photographing and wondering why there was only one, (they normally lay anywhere from 200-400 eggs), it turned out to be a male trying to mate. The males are only 2mm long and look somewhat different from the female, and the female is 10 times the size of the male.

You can see the male two spined spider (Poecilopachys australasiae) on the left of the image, a brownish colour, then the larger female on the right.

Another shot at a slightly different angle, once again Male two spinned spider (Poecilopachys australasiae) on the left and the female on the right.



                                     GREEN ORB WEB SPIDERS


I was really excited when I came across this little female Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas)

Female Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas)

Trying to shoot this girl in the web was quite hard as she was moving back and forward with the light breeze so trying to get a shot in focus was difficult.


We struck lucky as about a metre away there was a lovely small Male Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas) sitting on a bit of grass.

 Male Green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas)

Another angle of the Male green orb web spider (Colaranea viriditas), such a pretty species of spider.



                                               VAGRANT SPIDER



A fairly large male Brown Vagrant Spider (Uliodon species)



                                            SQUARE ENDED CRAB SPIDER


A large Square-Ended crab spider (Sidymella species) sitting on a bit of flax




                 BLACK HEADED JUMPING SPIDER



Last but not least of the spiders was a lovely Male Blackheaded Jumping spider (Trite planiceps)

Male Blackheaded Jumping spider (Trite planiceps)

Face shot

Side shot

Another side shot from a slightly different angle

Another face shot

And another side on shot





                                                        CICADAS


Now to probably my favoutie shots of the night, Some beautiful Cicadas just hatched out of there old skin, its quite amazing how the Cicadas can live under ground for 17years before comming out of the ground to shed, then they only live for 2months matting and sucking the tree sap.

Cicada still emerging from its old skin


Just finished pumping the blood into its wings, it normally takes about 30-45mins for the Cicada to fully emerge from its old skin, then about another 10-15mins for them to pump their wings up with blood.

Cicada

Amazing colours and patterns in their wings as shown below in the next two photos

Two cicadas side by side

Last but not least of the cicada shots is this amazing blue/green colour Cicada




                         LARGE GREEN STICK INSECT



Another interesting find, well spotted by Steve, was this large green female stick insect

Large female Green Stick insect

We managed to get her on my hand to show the sheer size of her, quite impressive

Trying to act like a stick, their defence strategy





                                                       OTHER BUGS



Some of the other insects we found.

Plant hopper


                                                    
                                                  GREEN MOTH


Beautiful green moth that landed on my finger



I decided to stick her on a tree after getting a nice photo of her on my finger; she made quite a nice photo on the tree.

Green moth




                                              BEETLE




Now this next bug was a very interesting Beetle something neither me or Steve have seen before, had quite a nice orange colour to it.

Small orange colour type beetle

Another angle


Last bug, a lovely brown shield beetle


I think that night was probably one of our most interesting/fun nights we have had out photographing bugs.