Monday, June 01, 2009

Garden pond miracles

Our garden pond has been the subject of several amazing little miracles over the last half a week. At least 25 adult Emperor dragonflies have emerged, hatching out of their larval skins and expanding into the most beautiful of our insects. Here are a few shots I took tonight of one emerging.

The skin of the nymph splits between the 'wings' and the soft adult bursts forth

The adult finally fully emerges and drags itself forward to grip the exuvia - its cast-off larval skeleton

The wings start to pump up and the body to straighten

1 comment:

Mark said...

Mike - I've been following your blogs relating to your garden pond - you've got a great dragonfly site there!. I am the British Dragonfly Recorder for Northants and Peterborough and would like to add your pond and its resident species to the county database (assuming you fall within my area and not Cambs). Could you send either your postcode or grid ref? Here is my northants dragonfly blog site and normal website:
northantsdragonflies.blogspot.com
www.northantsdragonflies.org.uk

Hope you can reply. Mark Tyrrell