Photo Adventures with Curiosity and Learning

Where we were - in the center upper is Queens condo where I live and in the middle bottom are a bunch of blue stick pins which indicate where I took these photos - Alexandra Hospital Butterfly Trail.

What an amazing evening. Larry and I decided to return to Alexandra Hospital Butterfly Trail as previous visits were full of surprises. We were not disappointed. We found a Lynx egg group that was hatching, the metamorphosis of a cicada and a couple of butterflies.

A yellow butterfly

A green bug - sort of like a shield bug but I think quite different

Eyes of the green insect

Here is the leaf on which the mom Lynx (Oxyopes ? or Hamataliwa ?) deposited her eggs. You can see part of the green leaf with veins in the upper left - and little spiderlings crawling everywhere

A close-up view of the babies

More of the cluster - eyes on me it seems

At the bottom of the cluster

At the top of the cluster. You can see the green leaf with veins that was the substrate for depositing eggs

Brown butterfly

Catching dinner

Preparing dinner

Maybe spores or eggs?

Two plant hoppers

This guy (Cicada) was extracting himself/herself from her pupal stage - note the micro-wings at the bottom and her eye. The next frames show the wings expanding and her inverting her position

Note the wings expanding as she inflates them (I think)

More wing development

Now she is raising herself to grab the old pupa shell and extract the remaining part of her abdomen

Reaching for the old shell

Long reach

Attaching one leg

Front legs attached to the old shell - and now extracting the remaining part of her abdomen

Arching her back and inflating her wings and extracting her abdomen

Fully extracted - now adjusting to a vertical position

Wings continuing to develop

Another view

Fully developed wings

Side view

Side view

Dorsal view

Closeup of her attachment to her old shell

C. Frank Starmer

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