An assortment of creatures from the garden photographed over the last fortnight, starting with a mating pair of flower wasps resting on the Persoonia cornifolia, the female is wingless.

Staying with wasps, the Lemon-scented Teatree, Leptospermum petersonii has been in flower and again attracting these yellow flower wasps in numbers.

And on the trunk of a White Brittle Gum, E mannifera, a velvet ant, in actuality a very small wingless female wasp species in the family Mutillidae.

This spring and summer we’ve seen more bluebottles than ever before.

Also on a brittle gum, a stink bug making its way up to the canopy.

Butterflies are much reduced in numbers now, as are many insect species, but this Yellow-banded Dart showed up and landed for a photograph.

Leaf-curling spiders have the shrubs festooned with their webs, this one was photographed at night with its forelegs waiting for the vibration that signals a catch.

To round off this collection a very small spider with hairy legs, as yet unidentified.

Click to enlarge.

Also known as the Blue-banded Bee, this beautiful native bee is a delight to have in the garden, especially if you grow tomatoes as it is an efficient buzz pollinator. It is a solitary bee, the female digs a shallow burrow in clay soil, or mud bricks if your house is so constructed, which she provisions with collected pollen for her offspring. Some native plants, for example the hibbertias, sennas, and solanums require buzz pollination by insects such as the Blue-banded Bee. The adults die with the onset of the cold weather, but the next generation is snug inside the burrows waiting until the seasons change and the cycle begins anew. The photographs were taken at a banksii x bipinattafida grevillea that has been very popular with at least two bees, nectaring and resting.

Click to enlarge.

Reference and further reading,   The Aussie Bee site.