By Helen Randerson, Bulletin 1/2024, March
I first saw it when it moved suddenly on the edge of a park bench at lower Orphan School Creek – a beautiful, bright yellow and blue bug with perfect colour and symmetry, looking like it had jumped straight out of a Wes Anderson movie!
As I thought I knew most of the local bugs but had never seen anything like this before, first, out came the camera to prove that it was real, before Googling for images of ‘yellow and blue insect with antennae’, to try and identify it.
As this search proved fruitless, I sought help from fellow nature enthusiasts Roberta Johnston, Judy Christie, Elisabeth Dark, Kim Hague-Smith and Chief Blue Wren, Andrew Wood. In the meantime, we christened it ‘WTF’ or ‘Glebe Graffiti’.
Judy and Kim came in first, both using apps to correctly identify it (Judy using iNaturalist), and Andrew supplied further information. It is an Amorbus Alternatus, a ‘Eucalyptus Tip-wilter Bug’ with tube mouth parts used to suck the sap out of gum leaves. The one at Orphan School Creek was the nymph form – before the nymph morphs into a less showy, inconspicuous, brown-coloured adult.
Has anyone else spotted one in Glebe?
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One comment. Please add yours.
Fascinating. I enjoyed finding out about it. I ‘ll keep on the lookout for one. Very good photograph.