מה
זברה פינק (Taeniopygia guttata)מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
Okay okay last zebra finch I swear (for now)
תמונות/קולות
מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
Still not super confident in this ID, they seem weird. But then again, there are a lot of Iridomyrmex species
מה
נימפית מצויצת (Nymphicus hollandicus)מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
My one terrible shot of these as the flew past at top speed :P
מה
צמחים בעלי פרחים (תת-מערכה Angiospermae)מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
And also a very blurry plant
מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled Torbia IDing to bring you a bird with angry eyebrows
תמונות/קולות
מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
Ah, a roach. What is it? Good question. It is something. Well, it's Neotemnopteryx or Paratemnopteryx at least, probably the former
תמונות/קולות
מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
Okay, males are a little easier so maybe we can get somewhere. Using the same reasoning as before, it's definitely Aritella, and the mirror is divided into at least three cells (maybe more but hard to see), so it must be in the Ilya Group or the Dumpalia Group. All of the Dumpalia Group are only known from WA so I am happy calling this Ilya Group. There are a lot of species but maybe we can get somewhere.
A. girralonga is out of range but it looks like everything else is fair game! The forewings are not darkened so A. fulviceps is out. A. chidnaria similarly has some areas of the forewing nearly black. A. cooma has the pronotum slightly wider at the front than at the rear. A. arinya has the face mostly yellow. So that leaves us with A. ilya and A. gurrinya. The key actually does separate them on external characters, with A. ilya having some forewing veins very light yellow and A. gurrinya having them all essentially the same colour as the membrane. I'm not seeing any traces of yellow veins here, and indeed the description also states that A. ilya has the pronotum wider in front than behind. So I am pretty happy calling this A. gurrinya!
מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
Normally a Lepidogryllus ID is out of the question because they are essentially identical, but L. parvulus has not been recorded near here so I'm fairly happy calling it L. comparatus
תמונות/קולות
מתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
See now this is an interesting one. Normally I would not attempt it with the notes given in Otte & Alexander (1983), but we also have Rentz & Su (2019) to go on. The latter shows A. fulviceps as looking like this, and calls it "a very distinctive species". Otte & Alexander's description matches this too, with extensive darkened regions on the forewings. Now, is that enough to be sure? No, probably not. But there is something additional - all the little pattern details are the same as in Rentz & Su's photographs. The pattern on the pronotum and legs are pretty much identical, and the overall shapes and proportions are the same (including ovipositor length). So tentatively I am happy to call this A. fulviceps
מה
סוג Aritellaמתצפת.ת
matthew_connorsתיאור
I'm actually quite liking the crickets at the moment. So what is this? We have a male as well in a few sightings which I initially thought would be the same species, but as it turns out I may even have two different species here in the females. So what are these red-headed crickets? They're Modicogryllini, and the red head, pale legs, lack of stripes on the head, and divided mirror (in the male at least) puts them in the Aritella group. The divided mirror of the male and rather long forewings of the female place them firmly in Aritella itself.
So how far can we go into the genus before we get stuck? The head is not black, so it's not A. laticaput or in the Duldrana Group. Aaaaaand I don't think we can really go further than that unfortunately. Even the males are very difficult without call or dissection, and there are more than twenty species in the genus. But that's okay, genus is good