Better than Orchids

Better than Orchids

Posted on: 19/01/2018

Tuesday April 26th 2016
I did my rounds this morning, checking for more orchids which is always fun in spring. They are strangely inconsistent, species changing, not coming up in the same place every year etc. But today, I chanced upon this lacewing larva on the hunt.
For two years, when I was writing Metamorphosis, I tried to find this shot. A larva, with its shield of corpses, catching an aphid. Only a year late but never mind.
I'm sure I won't be alone in that I had never before actually watched a lacewing larva feeding. The astonishing thing is that, once impaled on the larva's jaws, the aphid's body just collapsed like a deflating balloon, something I really must try to capture on film. Clearly lacewings have a hell of a suck!