Crickets are a normal feature of summer and autumn, with their numbers varying from year to year. This year we are seeing more than usual. This is probably due to a rather sudden reduction in green grass - their main food - when the damp spring ended abruptly in December.

The extended suitable conditions resulted in survival of more than the usual number of crickets, and now they are moving into new areas, seeking green grass and other food.

They don't move rapidly across the countryside, but large numbers eventually find their way into well-watered gardens, and many of them have obviously reached the centre of the city.

Like several other species of insects, crickets are attracted to lights. This results in their being found at the front of shops and offices in the morning.

The cricket - correctly known as the black field cricket - is a native insect. It hatches in spring from eggs laid in the previous summer and autumn, undergoing several moults before reaching adult size in late spring or early summer.

Its life is comparatively short - less than 12 months. We can expect to see more of them for a while until the cold and frosts of autumn. Most will be gone by winter.

Chirping crickets are males, and their calling is territorial - designed to attract females. The call is produced by rubbing their wings together - similar to scraping a comb over the edge of a card.

They can be serious pests in pasture country throughout Australia, but they are not normally serious nuisances in Ballarat home gardens. They are mainly active at night.

In central Ballarat their diet might change from mainly grass to insects - alive or dead - or decomposed plant material.

Predators of crickets include most larger ground-feeding birds, such as magpies, ravens and kookaburras.

Herons often seek them in paddocks, and foxes eat large numbers too. Reptiles, rats and larger frogs are other predators.

Although we rarely see them fly, they can do so, with swarms of females reportedly flying several kilometres at a time in search of egg-laying sites. This is probably more a feature of plague numbers in rural areas.

It was a delight to watch yellow-tufted and fuscous honeyeaters, red-browed finches and sacred kingfishers coming for a drink and a splash at a small dam at Mt Beckworth a week ago.

Wrens, thornbills, rosellas and other honeyeaters were also coming and going.

I think this is some sort of hawk moth caterpillar? It was a little longer than shown, when fully stretched it was 90/100mm long. We think it had been blown out of a tree. I.A. Allendale

This is a large caterpillar of an emperor gum moth, identified by its colourful spiky protuberances and its otherwise smooth fleshy body.

It appears to be full-size, probably ready to pupate and turn into a large and handsome pinkish-brown moth.

It would normally make a rough hairy chrysalis in the tree branches; it does not pupate in the ground.

Despite their size and colour, the caterpillars are not frequently seen by us, although they are probably not rare in the treetops, where they spend most of their lives feeding on tender new growth.

The striking adult moths are not seen as often as they were a few decades ago.