29 June 2010

Lacewing larvae



Budak and I were just discussing lacewing larvae, so you might like to see these pictures of some freshly emerging lacewings born in March literally at our front door. This shady surface is very popular with lacewings, as every year the door fairly bristles with patches of eggs on silk stalks.

Apologies for the poor quality of these pictures. These larvae needed a better photographer and possibly better equipment to do their finery justice.

2 comments:

budak said...

that's the first time I have seen the newly hatched lacewings on the eggstalk. Never had the patience to sit out the hatching.

anna tambour said...

Well then! You've given me the courage to post a couple more to show other details. I never put these online before because they are such poor photographs. As for patience, I'm no Fabre. I did keep my eyes on these, and was lucky enough to finally catch them in the act. To keep tragedy to a minimum, I can only touch on the details of the phasmid that I didn't catch emerging from its elegant plugged egg in tiny vial in front of me. Its little corpse is curled in its crystal tomb along with the egg case and the plug, neither of which possessed sufficient magic to save it from my ignorant belief that it would never hatch, no matter how friendly I made its environs. And as for the preying mantis egg case from which the young emerged one dawn all over my desk . . . I saved what I could, but some were permanently lost in the mountainous wilds of my desk.