Sunday, 22 January 2012

Nature Walk - Cicadas

Today we took a short nature walk and as usual the children collected lots of specimens. We noticed lots of exoskeletons of some kind of insect around the bases of trees and when we looked into the trees we found lots more stuck there. One was even being inhabited by a spider.





There were hundreds of them. We collected a few to take home and identify. We found out that these are the exoskeletons of cicada nymphs. The nymphs emerge from underground and make their way into the trees where they then moult and the adult cicada leaves the nymph skeleton behind. You can find out more here.


Check out those claws!

The children recorded their findings in their nature journals.

By R,  the 2 L shapes are its other legs which fell off in transit

By L

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