It is a beautiful sunny day here at The Olde House in Cornwall, perfect conditions for pond dipping!
Jaime was joined be seven families down by the pond and everyone did a great job of exploring the water. All the usual suspects were found; greater and lesser water boatmen, stickleback fish, newts, damselfly nymphs, pond snails. Then keeping with tradition, a new creature was found. It is large compared with the other creatures, about 7cm long and it looks similar to the water scorpions that we caught during the summer holidays, but it is not on the fact sheet, so the Internet had to be consulted!
The creature caught is a Water Stick Insect, “Ranatra linearis”, a relative of the water scorpions. They have strong grasping front legs to catch and hold prey and then, as with all true bugs, they pierce them with their ‘beak’, the rostrum, and suck the juices out!
