I’m not sure why I didn’t get round to pond-dipping last summer, but I was determined to remedy that! Yesterday, while the sun was out, I took my fishing net down to the stream. The stream is still flowing fast, so all I had to do was to dip my net in. It took a few attempts before I caught anything live, mostly it was seeds and plant-litter. Then I found this little shrimpy-looking thing. Only it wasn’t a shrimp, it was a mayfly larva – almost transparent with three prongs on its tail and six tiny legs.
Living up to a year in the water, a mayfly adult lasts for only a day. It emerges winged, but not quite mature. It goes to hide for a few hours before shedding its skin a final time. Taking off as one of a cloud of mayflies, it will mate in flight and then die exhausted. The male will fly to dry land to die and the female, after laying eggs on the surface of the water, collapses. The eggs drop to the bottom of the water and stick to plants and stones. The Latin name for mayfly is “Ephemeroptera” which means “short-lived with wings.”