Mayflies are on the menu for this hungry fledgling.
The common Himalayan Mayflies are Baetis and the stoneflies belong to Nemura, Capnia, etc.
Did you know that there are 2,500 unique species of mayfly in the world?
The greatest thrill of my career has been collecting and adding Mayflies and stoneflies to our collection.
The streams fed by the melting snow and
ice are inhabited by the larvae of Mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies and dipterous flies.
The mayfly larvae are truly aquatic insects,
which breathe by means of tracheal gills, borne oh either side of each abdominal segment.
The mayfly feeds only as larva and the adult has no opening for feeding,
so that its gut is simply filled with air.
Order 2. PLECOPTERA: Stoneflies breed in clean, cold,
running mountain streams and like Mayflies have a prolonged childhood, extending to over two or three years.
For example, Mayflies live only one day,
houseflies thirty days, rats three years, dogs twelve years, horses twenty- five years, elephants sixty years and men seventy years.
It then walked upstream, searching for food consisting of
caddis larvae, water beetles, water boatmen, spiders, tadpoles and nymphs of the mayfly or dragonfly, and sometimes small fish.
The adult caddisfly, stonefly, dragonfly, mayfly and mosquito find a pond or a stream, according to the particular habits
of the larvae, and deposit the eggs in the water.
The Mayflies are the shortest-
lived insects and hardly survive a couple of days, as delicate adults, with inconspicuous antennae, two pairs of membranous wings, enormously huge eyes, often occupying the whole head like a turban.
As a an entomologist who has studied stoneflies and Mayflies for over 40 years, I have discovered
these insects have value far beyond luring trout- they are indicators of water quality in streams and are a crucial piece of the larger food web.