At Crow’s Path, we were noticing masses of these large flying insects that appeared a cross between moths and dragonflies in the air. I wound up finding a decapitated one that I wanted to show to Lauren so I carried it with me to the Thrust Fault at Rock Point. About 20 minutes later, when I finally showed her, the body was still moving, seemingly in response to touch!! Crazy.
Without the head, the insect, a fishfly, resembles a dobsonfly. Dobsonflies, however, have enormous and intimidating mandibles, which are sorely lacking the far more approachable fishfly (family Chauliodinae).
They’ve been super abundant this past week, so today when I spotted a mystery egg mass, along with patches of former masses, on the underside of a black ash leaf along the lake shore, I suspected they were egg masses from these insects. My suspicions were correct.
