This post complements this earlier one as today I discovered a third ladybird/bug/beetle species enjoying a flower! Here is the minute two-spotted ladybird/ladybug/ladybeetle, officially known as Diomus notescens. And it really is minute, being just 2.5 mm long! It looks quite snug in this barely-opened flower:

There isn’t much information out there on this little hairy beetle — sorry to all the coleopterists, I mean, this little beetle covered in a very short pubescence!

Not even CSIRO’s ‘Ladybirds of Australia’ database has much. But it is an Australian native, and apparently endemic to the eastern and southern parts of Australia (which suggests, from this distribution map, that it’s been introduced to Western Australia and possibly far north Queensland and Tasmania).

I did find this video of it enjoying a cotton aphid:

Yet once again as with the other two ladybirds I’ve discovered here, this one much prefers to simply sit on top of a flower and (presumably) gorge itself on nectar, and without even waiting for the flower to fully open!

And here is as good a place as any to tag on this lovely scene discovered on a Suimen a few days ago: a spider sucking the life out of a grasshopper!

I only know these as jumping/hunting spiders but if I ever identify it and the ants (or should an expert passing by could be so kind) I’ll be sure to update accordingly!