I’ve been a bit busy of late, and haven’t been taking the time for posts – this will continue a little while longer, too. So I’m going to throw something down pretty quickly, the frozen pizza of the online world, because we need something here.
First of all, while this image isn’t the slightest bit impressive or even interesting, it’s evidence:
It’s
I’ve mentioned, ad nauseum, being involved in several projects, and most of those had a deadline of either christmas or The Girlfriend’s birthday, which means that most of them are done now, so I can devote a little more attention to other things. Among these have been installing three new sets of lights – actually four, but one was more for my use – and doing some
… and of course someone snuck in.
In this case, it was the first of the mantis egg cases (oothecas) hatching. There are several in the yard, including four now that had been naturally placed there – three Chinese mantids and a Carolina. I was doing routine checks, but the last one discovered, deep under an untended thicket of mostly vines, I now realize that
I’ll have this topic, my weekly one from last year, still peeking in occasionally because I like the comparisons, especially right now as the first indications of spring are popping up. So let’s step back to 2012.
That winter, I had a small aquarium that held a handful of finds from nearby ponds and streams, and an unidentified snail had laid eggs right against the glass,
This is just another perspective on the little story found here, since I shot the saga in both digital and film. What you’re seeing is the egg of a ground skink (Scincella lateralis,) right at the moment of hatching. Actually, it takes more than a moment, and this one in particular stayed in
And so we reach the halfway point in the year, at least as far as Sunday slide posts go. This week’s offering comes from April 2006, as a collection of wheel bugs (Arilus cristatus) hatches from an egg cluster affixed to the branch of a tree. I credit this capture to James L. Kramer, who has made a few
The praying mantids have been an ongoing saga on this blog now for several years, and if you want to call it an obsession, no argument from me. While I am definitely motivated to capture sequences and behavior of any species that I can, I happen to like mantids, and I’ve had the opportunities to bear close witness to them. So here we are again.
Not having found any distinctive evidence of local
I decided to try and answer a couple of questions raised in the post about the newborn mantids, so I went out and collected the debris that was still hanging from the egg sac, that the newborns had been suspended from immediately after emergence. The first thing to become apparent was that it hung from a webbing
I had a post in draft form wherein I mentioned that I was keeping my eye on the egg case of the Chinese mantises (Tenodera aridifolia sinensis,) figuring it was due to erupt at any time. This morning, that post was ruined.
I was just about to head off to meet with a student when I took a last look at the egg case, and found it almost literally dripping with newborn mantids. I quickly got the camera