Sunday, August 10, 2014

Egg through a straw

Of a dozen iris eggs I have found this summer, five have hatched, three are heads-up, ready to hatch in the next couple of days, and one has been sucked dry by some predator:


Notice the small hole in one of the transparent panels. That must be where something stuck its proboscis in and drank the contents. Yesterday, this egg looked like this:


Clearly, either the contents is liquid at this stage or the predator injected some digestive fluid to liquify it.

Guy

2 comments:

Chris Walpole said...

Fascinating to see the egg with the microscopic hole. Great observations and photos!

Guy said...

Thanks Chris. I was tempted to bring the empty egg home to get better photos under the microscope but in the end I left it there, out of respect. Guy