{"id":31435,"date":"2022-03-21T01:01:25","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T05:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=31435"},"modified":"2022-03-21T01:01:25","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T05:01:25","slug":"early-to-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2022\/03\/early-to-the-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Early to the party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, The Girlfriend and I were checking out the progress of various plants in the yard when I glanced down at one of the rosemary bushes and stopped dead. This particular bush had a little extra alongside, one of the Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis<\/em>) egg sacs\/oothecas that I’d collected less than a month ago<\/a>, affixed to a tall stick planted almost in contact with the bush. And that egg sac, against all expectations, was hatching out. In fact, I caught it in the latest stages, but soon enough to get a little action anyway.<\/p>\n

\"newborn
Now, this is way<\/em> early, close to a month before the earliest for any previous years witnessed, and roughly two months before some of the latest ones, so it’s safe to say that I wasn’t expecting this at all. There’s still some concern over getting another overnight frost in the next month or so, but they didn’t bother checking with me on the best season for emerging so they’re on their own.<\/p>\n

I was a bit past ideal time to capture this, since it seems most had already hatched out and were scampering about on the branch that I’d attached the egg sac to, as well as on the rosemary itself, but a decent cluster of them were still dangling beneath the sac while they got their legs in operation and detached themselves from their suspending filaments.<\/p>\n

\"newborn
I was shooting by ambient light, having detached the flash because I was using the tripod for video work at the same time and the macro rig uses the same quick-change plate – maybe someday I’ll correct that, but it wasn’t today. So I was mostly shooting wide open and thus focus was a little short, but adequate to the task anyway (and I’ve got a ton of other photos<\/a> from previous years’ sessions anyway.) <\/p>\n

\"newborn
As I’ve illustrated previously, they emerge with a bullet-shaped, swollen noggin with only dark spots delineating the eyes, but this swelling soon goes down while the eyes stand out – this one’s almost completely through its transition. Is this fluid that fills out the eyes? Got me – I doubt I could effectively dissect one to answer that question even if I was so inclined, and so far, no source that I’ve found has provided the solution either.<\/p>\n

But as you know if you read the post right before this, I shot some video clips of this.<\/p>\n