The luck of the Irish to ya!

And a bug update.

The garden is showing us a wonderful example of ecosystem equilibrium in action:

 



 














Old broccoli full of aphids for a few weeks now – and along have come the ladybirds to feast on them J.

Our house, too, is progressing to an ecosystem in equilibrium.  We had noticed new bugs in the house (these ones fly and are bigger), so Jye (ecological pest control) came and took some samples to post off to the Ag Dept – and here is what we have now:

•          Foreign grain beetle/mould beetle (Ahasverus advena)

•          Predatory pirate bug (Anthocoridae) – feed on other insects, mites and eggs.

•          2 x Mites:

Laulapidae – Large (1mm) predators of insects and other mites

Tydeidae – Scavengers (~0.5mm) feeding on fungi and remains of dead invertebrates

So – predators of the barklice – should mean they are slowly getting eaten out of existence! 

My big question of course was “What eats these bugs then?!”  I did a bit of research on the net, and spiders seem to be the go – plenty of those in the house too (though I did just vacuum them all up this morning… it was time to clean up the quite large webs they had spun…they will come back…).

Don’t you just love it when your home is a science experiment in action ;-)?!