I had a great day searching for insects in Daisy Hill Conservation Park today. I found some rare and unusual critters too. The most visually spectacular of them all was a beetle from the Rhipiphoridae family, which are also known as wedge-shaped beetles. The one I found was a male, as told by his extravagant antennae, and he was perched at the tip of a small wattle. Rhipiphorids have a surprising lifecycle for a beetle, with their grubs being internal parasitoids of other insects, including other beetles. The strangest of all the insects I found was actually one that found me! I was standing at the track edge on the Buhot Creek Circuit examining something that I can’t quite remember now, when I felt a fly land on my leg. When I looked down, I saw a fly like no other I had seen before. It had a flattened shape with a strange, hawk-like face, complete with hooked mouthparts, and I didn’t trust its intentions! I tried to shake it off, but it kept landing back on my leg repeatedly, and I r...