When dipping the river at Bellever on Dartmoor I found a strange looking tube made of sand. I turned out to be the case of a Rheotanytarsus sp midge larva. Sadly it didnt seem to be occupied, but a new one for me anyway.
Today I’m off to the Launch of the Freshwater Habitats Trust, formerly known as Pond Conservation. I hope to Tweet this evening from the meeting and blog after the event, but to celebrate the launch, here are some phantom midge larva photos. I blogged some of the fascinating things about these brilliant creatures here:
After the success of the Pond olive mayfly larva post I thought I post about another of the ponds amazing creatures: the Phantom midge larva. I took some photos of these creatures today. They are specialised predators that live a mostly planktonic life. Floating around in open water they would be easily spotted and vulnerable…
A couple of Pond creature photos, taken with my aquarium set up a while back. Both of these are under 1cm long and required the use of extension tubes for grater magnification. First up this Haliplus water beetle larva. And a couple of phantom midge larvae close ups
Some more pond photos. First up my best photo yet of a Pond olive mayfly nymph. This one appears to have lost half of its middle tail filament. I also photographed some chironomid midge larvae. this group is best known for its red coloured species, known as bloodworms. This species however was green and hide…
I’ve finally got round to editing some photos from a pond photography session back in February. This included some of my best photos of phantom midge.
Some more of the pond photos from January. Most of these have had some dust and dirt cloned out of them and a couple, notably the following photo, has had the background touched up. The first photos are of a water louse or slater. They are the aquatic relative of the woodlouse. They are often…