Pistons of some bright machine

25 October 2009 8 Comments Home » Insects etc.

A mayfly from a long forgotten spring,
in some species the adults live only a few minutes.
 

Richard Wilbur in the poem “Mayflies” found them:
 

“the weavers of some cloth of gold,
Or the fine pistons of some bright machine.”

 
A mayfly from a long forgotten spring
 

_____________________________________
Pterygota | Ephemeroptera

8 Comments »

  • Michael Sinclair said:

    A very delicate and beautiful creature.

  • Rick said:

    All the more reason to mate in mid-air, Michael.

  • Denice said:

    Life lived in an instant. Timeless. Priceless.

  • Rick said:

    Thanks Denice. I’d like to weave wings like those.

  • jason said:

    Like a crystal figurine . . . Stunning!

  • Rick said:

    Thanks Jason. An inspiration for Tiffany and Chihuly.

  • Diane said:

    I call these fishflies. I see literally thousands every year outside my work at night (close to Lake St. Clair) but I believe they only live 48 hours?

    And they really do smell like fish! Your picture is beautiful, the ones I see are brownish/grey, a bit on the dull side in terms of color. Is this a different type? or just a very flattering picture?

  • Rick said:

    Adult mayflies don’t live more than a day or two. Hard to say about the color, but this is a flattering picture.

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.