Unexpected Guest

Walking Stick at the Wetland, July 17, 2021

I don't think of walking sticks as wetland species, but nothing should surprise me anymore I guess. While "making my rounds" early morning on July 17th searching for dragonfly exuvia, among the emergent plants on the east side of the pond there was a walking stick. Once I realized that also among the long leaves of whatever emergent plant this is (I'm still learning) there were also willow leaves interspersed sprouting from an adjacent tree, the presence of the walking stick was less a mystery. Decades ago when we were homeschooling our children, there was a season when we had come across a walking stick and kept it for observation. We had found it on a willow tree, so we made frequent trips to a nearby willow tree to pluck a few leaves to keep our walking stick happy and healthy.

Not too long after we began observing the walking stick, we noticed a number of small, hard somewhat oblong objects appearing in the bottom of the container... eggs. We learned in the process that many species of walking sticks are parthenogenic -- females can lay viable eggs without a male walking stick. Male walking sticks exist but are not required for reproduction. As might be expected, eggs laid by a female without male participation result in all female offspring.

Sure enough, sometime later our walking stick eggs hatched. It was surprising how long the baby walking sticks were when they hatched-- surprisingly longer than the eggs they came out of. We didn't witness them actually hatching, but I would have loved to see how these long little babies popped out of the much shorter eggs!