Critters are a special interest of mine. I am not sure why but I want to know what makes them tick. I want to know how they hunt, how they raise their young and how they survive in a world that is seemingly against them. Every chance I get, I hike the hillside and marshes to observe whatever I find. Usually, I am pretty good at identifying them but, every now and again, one throws me. Now, it has been two in two days. Yesterday, the slender twig ant was a new name for me. I knew it was an ant but did not know much about it. Today, another critter and another mystery became my quest. This time, a bright green bug was found on the ti plant. It was about the size of a penny....round and flat. I had never seen this bug before so I decided to play with it a while to get a good look at it. The bug was very docile and did not attempt a getaway nor did it "attack". In fact, it sat calmly on my hand before I let it retreat back into the leaves of the ti plant.
Now that I found out that this bug is the nymph stage of a stink bug, I may come to regret that decision to let it live. Come spring, this little rascal's descendents may ruin a good number of my tomatoes! Yep. The flat, green bug is in the 4 instar of becoming a full blown stink bug! Had I known, I probably would have smacked it just to protect the gardens. Well, maybe I would have. Look at how cute that little critter is! Maybe I would not have.
For the past several years, I have been noticing some pretty elaborate caterpillar looking critters happily munching on the leaves of the Groundsel bushes near the shore end of the pier. Groundsel bushes are also known as salt myrtle as they grow in or around salt marshes. They are low growing, thick bushes that make a plethora of fluffy, white seeds that look a lot like swarming termites when they are being scattered by the wind. (Yes, termites are bad down here so anytime there is a "swarm" of anything, we think termites.) The caterpillars munch away on the leaves until the bushes are pretty much stripped. Then, the little buggers go into hiding until they do their larva-changing-into-adult thing.
Today, instead of caterpillars, I found the adults. The adults are beetles that look quite different from the caterpillars or larvae Where the young are brightly colored and iridescent (almost metallic looking), the beetles are bright yellow and black. The beetles were so busy eating that they were oblivious to my attempts at photographing them. Dozens of the critters crawled about the bush and I am sure there were just as many on the other bushes along the shoreline. We have an infestation of cute, little bugs!
Long story, made short. It seems that the beetle was introduced to keep the invasive Groundsel bush in check. While I cannot vouch for the veracity of the story, it may make sense in a weird sort of way to whoever thought of it. Why not introduce yet another possibly invasive species into an area that is plagued by so many? I will say, if the bush is invasive, the caterpillars and beetles are doing their part of stripping the leaves and perhaps weakening it but who is to say that these critters are not going to move on to other plants? Oh, well. At least they are cute!...but I could do with the invasive part. Maybe if they ate termites....just saying...
