Small Critters

There has been an increasing number of bugs and small creatures which call our garden home. From the numerous and annoying: ants and aphids, to the useful and ever-cute: ladybirds.

I've also spotted a few grasshoppers, ranging in size and colour. The biggest is about 6cms long and is predominantly brown. There's also a camouflage expert, a green hopper which looks more like a leaf insect, but it 'pings' from my tomato plants to the garden bed, and is very hard to see unless it is moving.

There are also these orange and black winged insects. They look like a cross between a ladybird and a cockroach. For they are roach-shaped, but orange with black spots, and roughly the size of a ladybird if it was squished sideways. They have a fondness for eating zucchini leaves. This one here is traversing a dried corn leaf.

Until about a month ago, I was convinced that our garden did not have any earthworms. In my diggings around the yard, I never came across one. Also, I think the soil is far too dry for earthworms to proliferate. I was proven wrong when I was transplanting my lime seedling into a bigger pot. I found this very skinny, almost translucent, earthworm in the process.

There are also a handful of skinks and a white-striped lizard or two. The residential skinks like our garden beds and come out in the morning when I am watering to quench their thirst. They are quite tame, and will stay very still while eyeing me the whole time. I managed to snap this photo of one underneath a basil plant.

There are also, from time to time, some pigeons and birds who sit on the fence eyeballing me as I water the garden. The pigeons coo away, while the smaller birds (I don't know their name, but they're tiny zippy little grey & white things) usually wait till I am at a safe distance before descending quickly into a garden bed and making off with as much hay mulch they can carry in their miniscule beaks. They are very cute, and always come in a pair. I like to think that I'm helping in their nest construction. No photos of them as yet, as they flit away and are quite alert and wary.