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Post by Wood~Ant on Sept 1, 2014 8:25:57 GMT
Just had a few minutes of fun and games, as today Jen was cleaning out and fresh bramble put in for our stick insects. One of the winged male Macleay's decided to go fly about round our kitchen, and each time we went to catch it he fluttered away several feet across the room. He was eventually caught and put back in the tank, but not after giving us the run around for 3 minutes. Jen found it highly amusing and he looked really pretty with his long wings outstretched as he flew around our heads.
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Post by Jenny on Sept 1, 2014 9:09:00 GMT
This is one of the females not a baby anymore, she is a lot bigger than the male. She is so heavy I transfer her on one of the sticks. They move about constantly once alerted, so very difficult to get a stable photo, but they are fun to have. These have laid tons of eggs.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Oct 7, 2014 9:00:21 GMT
While cleaning out our stick insect tank today and finding lots of eggs, Jen called me to look at the newspaper she had put in the bottom to replace the old one. In the corner of the glass tank was a lovely new baby nymph stick insect. We must have missed one egg the last time they were cleaned out, which was about 13 days ago, or it was laid and hatched out just after? None of the other eggs have hatch in our boiler cupboard, yet this one did in the tank and it was lucky to get seen before Jenny cleaned out the tank and disposed of the rubbish.
Not sure what the species is, but definitely NOT a Macleay's Spectre. Pretty little thing to look at, so hope Jen will get a photo up later.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jan 9, 2015 8:44:21 GMT
Two more babies born last night. Both are the Sunny variety Read more here.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Mar 25, 2015 15:51:54 GMT
The baby stick insects that were born during winter all died sadly, but today 2 of the Macleay's Spectre were born and are currently running around looking like fast moving army ants.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Apr 6, 2015 15:49:56 GMT
While none of my Sunny stick insect eggs have hatched at all, I have just transferred our 7th Macleay's Spectre baby from the egg box into the nursery tank. They are all eating bramble and are very fast and active.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Apr 12, 2015 7:54:07 GMT
Four more baby Macleay's born in the last 24 hours, so I am keeping the eggs well moistened as this encourages them to hatch and aids the baby insects to pull themselves clear of the egg shell and inner membrane.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Apr 14, 2015 13:08:41 GMT
Newly born baby stick insects are being born at the rate of 2 per day now, and although a few of the earlier babies have died due to weakness, we now have 13 which seem to be feeding. With about 170 eggs still to hatch we could end up with a large number of adults, and as they grow quite large we might find our big glass tank may be rather full this summer.
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Post by Wood~Ant on May 7, 2015 8:54:03 GMT
Some of the weaker babies tend to die as they do not seem to feed well, but others are born to replace them so the numbers tend to remain about the same. A couple of the older ones which have fed well on bramble leaves have shed their skins, so these have a beter chance of making it to adulthood.
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Post by Wood~Ant on May 16, 2015 13:30:20 GMT
Now that summer has started there is a great increase in eggs hatching, and our baby stick insect population is rising rapidly day by day.
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 4, 2015 7:11:20 GMT
It was fun and games last night, as just as we were going to bed Jen spotted a baby stick insect above my bedroom door. How it had got there is beyond me, but I managed to capture it and popped it into the baby tank. Then I saw something on the open window of our bathroom. Yep, another baby Macleay was sitting near my Easter cactus plants, though none of the flowers had been nibbled. So this baby was also carefully picked up and placed in with the rest of our growing tribe which now numbers around 30+
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