Morning Walk At Lower Pierce Reservoir (18 Apr 2014)

Taking the opportunity that it was the Good Friday holiday, I was thinking of showing my wife the Venus Drive trail that I been talking so much about in this blog. With much expectation we headed to Venus Drive. When we reached the place, my heart sank as the place was packed with people and the car park was full. With no other choices, I decided to give the Lower Pierce Reservoir a try. Fortunately the place was not crowded like that of the Venus Drive.  I was not expecting much from this trip as previous trips to this place was not exceptionally fruitful especially in the day.

I was pleasantly surprised to have this lovely metallic blue Leaf Beetle as the first beetle for the trip.

The next beetle was a 3 mm Fungus Beetle that found among some tall grass.

I must have not come to this place for a long time as the place changed quite a fair bit with some construction going on. I was surprised to find an area that looked like the clearing at Venus Drive and without any hesitations, I make a bee-line to it. The first beetle I found at there excited me as it was an Ant-like Flower Beetle (Anthelephila cyanea). The last encounter with this type of beetle was at Venus Drive and it was a lone specimen. At this place I found a tree full of this beetle, easily more than 10 of them.

On another tree nearby, I found this yellow color pupa of the Illeis koebelei Ladybird Beetle.

Not surprisingly, I found several of the adult Ladybird Beetle (Illeis koebelei).

Moving to an area of fallen trees, I found a few Fungus Beetle (Episcapha quadrimacula). It was interesting to observe that many of these beetles started to come out when the sky became dark and threatening to rain.

Moving along a fallen tree, I found several of this lovely colored beetle larvae. This may be the larvae of the Episcapha quadrimacula Fungus Beetle since the place was crawling with this type of beetle.

A big surprise was to find this relatively large 8 mm Hister Beetle or Clown Beetle. All the Hister Beetle that I came across previously are mostly 3-4 mm in size. This particular specimen looked very much like  Hololepta plana, but differ slightly in the shape of its pronotum. Without other obvious differences, I would identify it asHololepta plana at this point in time.

Just as I was enjoying the time photographing the Hister Beetle, a large Jewel Beetle suddenly landed on the same tree trunk as the Hister Beetle. This particular Jewel Beetle was pretty skittish and disappeared after a few camera shots.

Staying motionlessly on the side of a tree were two Checkered Beetles. They are highly sensitive and both flew off just after one photograph.

They were well camouflaged and only with the camera flash that their colors appeared.

On another tree log was this beetle larvae. There were several of them at the place and it is a sure sign that the beetles are recovering or recovered from the dry spell which ended a few weeks back.

Another well camouflage beetle - a Fungus Weevil resting on a fallen log.

I am so happy that I was able to find another Hister Beetle (Platysoma leconti) among some white fungus. This is about 3 mm in size, which is relatively small compared to the earlier Hister Beetle (Hololepta plana).

Crawling quickly along the fallen tree was this Ambrosia Beetle. It was fun looking at this beetle as they tend to be rather clumsy and fall over every now and then.

Just when I was enjoying the number of beetles found at this "clearing", the wind picked up and the sky above was rumbling away. It was about to rain and likely to be heavily given the darkness of the clouds. Just before I decided to go, this Fungus Beetle appeared and hurriedly move across the while fungus.

The trip was surprisingly fruitful even though it was a short one because of the rain. I am glad to have come here and found this new "clearing" which look promising for a good night shoot session.