More stuff of Antigua

[urbpan]

How about a random selection of vacation pictures? From Aphid to Zenaida.


Here's one for my entomologist friends. This is a leaf of giant milkweed, covered in oleander aphids. But there are at least two other kinds of insects here? What the heck are they?


Here's a guy on the beach.


I really like this tree.


A person could make a coffee table book of the architecture of Antigua. Everything from broken-down shacks, to charming cottages, to fancy villas. I'd love to spend a day just wandering taking pictures of them.


These cattle egrets have found a creature that is more efficient at stirring up insects than cattle.


Signature feature of Antiguan plant life: horrible pointiness.


And this is why.


Look at the eyebrows on the one goat!


Bananaquit on a cactus tree (that rhymes).


Common Antiguan road hazards.


Driving out of the town as a cruise ship rolls into it.


Someone's private home converted from an old sugar mill.


Carib grackle foraging at the airport. This one deserves its own "More Urban Species" post.


Some rocks standing around at Deep Harbor Beach.


Alexis sits in the driveway waiting for a bird picture opportunity to present itself.


Zenaida doves, close relatives of our mourning doves back home.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

nice! that close-up leaf picture is amazing, if disgusting :)

Milkweed

[frith]

The insect in the lower right is easy: syrphid (hover) fly larva, it eats aphids. The other insect is either a woolly aphid (unlikely, they suck trees) or a ladybird beetle larva (more likely, they eat aphids).

Suddenly, I recall a scene involving singing maggots in Flushed Away.

Re: Milkweed

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Much obliged, my broadly knowledgeable friend.

Re: Milkweed

[frith]

'Guess that arthropod' is fun. ^_^

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

The white spiky thing is the larvae of Cryptolaemus montrouzieri, the mealybug destroyer. The adult is a ladybird beetle.

It was introduced from Australia in 1891 to control citrus mealybugs in California, but is now commercially reared for biological control.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I knew I could count on you. :)

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to be of help.

[frith]

Cool! This insect does not survive cold winters and can be used in greenhouses, especially in large greenhouses with multiple colonies of soft bodied aphids and scale insects. It was introduced to control mealy bugs attacking citrus orchards and can still be obtained for use as a biological control. http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/ent/biocontrol/predators/cryptolaemus_m.html

[joejack.livejournal.com]

Prickly pears! We have a lot of them in the dry, semiarid part of southern British Columbia. These little guys are hard to see sometimes and will stick really deep into your flesh. You have to yank them out real quickly if they stick into you, because trying to pull them out slowly seems too make them stay in you even more firmly



These ones are opuntia fragilis. A different species, opuntia polycantha grows on the prairies and a third, opuntia humifusa grows in southern Ontario and is a lot less spiny.

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

Very nice bunch! I especially like the sugar mill house and the aluminum-sided "bungalow."

[weofodthignen]

Pretty, thanks :-) I have never been drawn to the Caribbean, though I'm told it's not really as hot as it looks. But you make Antigua look attractive :-)

M