Greetings fellow Foxies,

Last April I was wandering through Foxes Lair in the evening when my eyes espied a glowing jam wattle. I raced over hoping that it was a sign like a burning bush, to find the stems completely covered by a gleaming white mass. Close examination revealed a mass of gleaming white tubes and balls, interspersed by what looked like gross engorged ticks.
Gadzooks, it was an invader from the east! Cryptes baccatus/Wattle Tick scale
Wattle tick scale occur in eastern Australia, South Australia and the Perth region of Western Australia, feeding on acacias such as black wattle (A. mearnsii), Sydney golden wattle (A. longifolia), hickory wattle (A. implexa) and blackwood (A. melanoxylon).
Globular in shape,  and resembling an engorged tick, wattle tick scale can be up to 7mm in diameter. Initially the scale are a whitish colour, turning dark brown as they age. The adult males, which are small winged creatures, are seldom seen. Feeding scale produce honeydew which attracts ants that disrupt the activities of natural enemies.

The images below show all stages of the life cycle. Small reddish oval insects are crawlers (babies) that wander to a suitable spot to start sucking the plant (head down, bum up). They lose their legs and develop a tubular waxy coat that is open at the end so ants can get honeydew that they excrete. After an adult male has mated with it, the pregnant female swells up and, turns brown, dies and releases crawlers for the next season.
Although they are interesting natural insects, I hope that they don’t spread here. They clearly have an obesity problem.

Did you realise that scales are inter-related with mealybugs and psyllids, and that it is very easy to confuse them.
If you share my interest in these critters 
read this

.Greetings fellow Foxies,
The name millipede means ‘thousands of legs’ but they generally have up to 350 in pairs. As their diet consists of leaf litter and other detritus, native millipedes are very handy in the bush for recycling nutrients. Native millipedes have a lumpy ‘Michelin Man’ look, and are common in low numbers.
Alas, now when I turn over a rock in Foxes Lair I find dozens of a smelly invader the Portuguese Millipede (Ommatoiulus moreletii) that probably arrived in plant pots with potting mix. There were thousands crawling around York gum rocky red soils this morning. They swarm and mate after first rains in autumn, so expect them soon in houses.
When I was with the Ag Dept, we would get lots of queries on control from anguished householder who were being invaded in the evening.

This is an excellent article with everything you wanted to know about Portuguese millipedes. (apart from permanent control – an introduced pest with no effective predators).
They are attracted to light so turn porch and hall lights off for now
A friend of mine "let my chooks out of their yard and they scratched and disturbed all  of my leaf litter.
---- it coincided with my massive invasions on the first rains,reducing to bugger all."

Greetings fellow Foxies,
About this time of the year clumps of Sawfly larvae are commonly seen clustering on eucalypt branches.
These are actually the larvae of a wasp that has a saw-like device that they use to slit open bark and leaves to insert their eggs.
Larvae congregate in groups in daylight hours for protection. When disturbed they jerk up their heads and tails and emit a foul yellow fluid smelling of eucalyptus or other oil. This is a small boy’s delight (well it was for me but I can’t vouch for the smartphone generation). At night they move in procession to young shoots, which they systematically strip of leaves.
I have seen eucalyptus sawflies in Foxes Lair in autumn, but apparently other species attack Callistomen, Callitris, Ficus, and Leptospermum.
More information - http://australianmuseum.net.au/Sawflies

Greetings fellow Foxies,
Last October when I was photographing stink bug eggs on the nuts (fruit) of my gungurru (E. caesia) mallee, I found nuts inhabited by a strange spidery web.
After dissecting a nut I discovered a brown grub in each valve. The "spider web" was, in fact a mass of poo (frass) and seed packing that had been extruded in a silken mass.
I put some nuts in a glass jar, and sure enough in summer small mottled moths had emerged. These are called concealer moths, apparently because they are camouflaged to resemble bird poo.
They belong to a huge family Oecophorida  (mallee moths) that apparently evolved with the eucalypts. Most of them eat dead eucalypt leaves and hide in a nest of leaves/ bark etc. held together by a web.
Some members are word-wide pests of stored food, carpets, and fabrics.
I just checked, and sure enough a few drably silvered moths fluttered out of the food cupboard.
Somewhere there are webby grubs in flour, grain, pasta or dried fruit. I just sieve them out (no says wife!).
My family also claim that there is a thriving population in my wallet.