On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 02:56:44PM +1100, wrote:
> For moths and also butterflies many of the Australain books are rather
> technical treatises rather than ready to use identification guides. As far
> as I'm aware there have not been any recent guides to this sort of thing
> but the following should be accessable via a good library. ...
Andrew Isles has "Moths of Australia" - for half price, but that is
still $75. As Martin says its a technical reference and not easy to
read but its a lovely book.
"Australian Insects - A Natural History" by Bert Brunet is much more
easy-to-read. Again its not an id. guide but some of the conspicuous
species around Sydney are depicted.
Two weeks ago my 5 year old daughter found a brightly coloured "beetle"
in the backyard and I was asked to identify it and supply suitable
information to be conveyed with its display at kindergarten the
next day. I said something about it being an impossible task as there
are about a million species of invertebrates in Australia and most
of them beetles . But when went to the bookshelf I found its picture
on the cover of Brunet's book! Incidentally not a beetle but a bug,
a Cotton Harlequin Bug.
There is a good web resource for caterpillars:
http://www-staff.mcs.uts.edu.au/~don/larvae/larvae.html
I used it to identify an Impatiens Hawk Moth caterpillar found in our
backyard earlier this year. It was good value as it went to kindergarten
as a caterpillar and then 4 weeks later as a newly-emerged moth.
Andrew
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