Small things

[vaneramos]

I've submitted a story for Wednesday's 1001 Nights Cast to be webcast at 17:12 Sydney time, 3:12 EDST.

I've been thinking about small things. Flowers with sexual parts so small the eye can hardly see. Tiny bugs that turn into monsters in front of a camera.

Some bugs aren't so small, like this stick insect, about 7.5 cm (3 inches) long. Canada has only one native species, Diapheromera femorata, which I've seen less than 10 times in my life. One appeared on the dock at Lake Fletcher Saturday afternoon. I was tempted to say "one landed", but truthfully I don't know how it arrived. It might as well have crawled out of the lake (not very likely). It held still for five minutes while I poked the camera at its bug eyes. It stayed there for a while, but when I turned from photographing a dock spider the size of my thumbnail, it had vanished. These things do manage to fly, and I wish I had seen it.

One website said adults drop eggs into the leaf litter in fall. Nymphs emerge in spring and gradually metamorphose to adults by late summer. This individual's full-grown size seems inconsistent with that.







A photo of a hobblebush bud (Viburnum lantanoides) is posted in macro_pics.


[Edit (2006-07-23] The insect shown here is not a walking-stick at all, but a grass mantis, Thesprotia graminis.