I went outside quite late one evening because I heard a noise, so I thought I’d venture out to see what I could see. I never did find out what the noise was or where it came from, but while I was shining the torch around I saw a little flash of light reflecting in the dark. I knew this could only be coming from the eyes of an insect, and obviously I had to go and inspect. I didn’t have my glasses or my phone, so I rushed back inside to get these and then rushed back outside to find the source.
When I was close enough, I could see the glinting eyes were coming from a beautiful antlion. It looked absolutely magical sitting on a purple bougainvillea flower, with its wings reflecting all different shades of mother of pearl.
There are many different species of antlions. This one is called the mottled veld antlion (Palpares caffer) and they are rather large. I think this one is a male, as the abdomen is rather long and has an extension at the end, used to clasp the female during mating.
This is the adult stage of the antlion. You may have seen those little conical pits in the sand, which are so iconic of the bushveld? Well, those are the larval stage of these magnificent creatures.
At night when it’s dark, and you hear scrabbling in the leaves on the ground, it always sounds really loud, especially when you have no idea what is running around there. It always sounds like something enormous is among those leaves. Until you shine the torch and see what you see. This particular night it was ground beetles of various sorts as well as the millipedes.
Before I knew what those reflective eyes were, and I was still charging off to find them before they potentially disappeared, I did have a quick stop to check on what was happening on the ground (because whatever this was also had the potential to disappear before I’d found out what it was) and the culprit was this beautiful millipede. They always surface when it’s been raining (we hadn’t had any rain, but it was overcast) and so there were a number of them out and about. In South Africa, we call millipedes shongololos [shong-goh-loh-loh]. This species with its black and white stripes is very striking. They are rather large and belong to the zebra millipede group. As you can see, this one had it’s own little pet mite hitching a ride (the little orange dot on its head). This is not uncommon among millipedes and various beetles. The mites play an important role in cleaning their host, and the millipedes and beetles obviously provide the mites with their next tasty meal.
Since I was out and about outside anyway, I decided to check on our baboon spider who lives along the side of our pathway, to see if she was out of her burrow. She tends to sit with just her front legs out so that she can safely reverse home if she needs to.
She was out of her burrow (well, her legs were out …) which was nice, although this does not make for the best photo opportunities. Besides the fact that she is quite shy as well. She was identified on a mygalomorph group I belong to as Ceratogyrus darlingi.
There really was quite a lot on the go this particular evening. And as I mentioned, when it’s dark, everything is very loud and everything is scrabbling around amongst leaf litter, bits of twig or the sand with its tiny stones and the sound always seems to be very much amplified, particularly when you see just how little the creature at the cause of all the noise can actually be.
Further along the path after visiting our little spider, I heard something else scrambling around, and shining the torch I saw a couple of ground beetles. Again, when it’s so dark and things are on the move, to get a fantastic picture is not always easy. But these two little ground beetles were very busy doing what ground beetles do and being very good at avoiding my attempts to capture their eternal portrait.
What always does amaze me however, is once I’ve taken a picture and zoomed in (sometimes it’s not necessary to zoom in that much even), is the incredible detail on these little creatures. Hairs, spikes, colours, patterns, ridges etc. It really is quite incredible the amount of details found in each tiny little insect. The ground beetle all in black, has a full set or armour on him! He looks like something from Star Wars!
It was clearly a night for antlions to be out and about. As I made my way back inside, I was confronted with another beautiful antlion on the door (we have a screendoor, so that we can leave the door open for cool air when it’s so hot, but not have a full invasion of insects come inside). Also male and because this one is in the light you can see the mottled markings. And the eyes. Look at how incredibly large those eyes are. Quite amazing. They almost seem unreal with their bottle green colour reflecting like gemstones.
Of course there are several dangers in the dark of the night for these various insects going about their business. There are numerous predators all on the hunt for their evening meals as well. We have a large amount of geckos of different sorts and this little one was also sitting on the wall close the lights shining from inside, waiting to see what he could get. The lights do provide the geckos with rather a large choice of dinners. This little chap was still quite tiny, so the antlion was safe at least, from him that night.
Author
berniceinthebush@gmail.com
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