Free Desktop Backgrounds, Page 7

Mayflies

Caddisflies

Stoneflies

I've taken a few of my favorite pictures and made them into nice desktop backgrounds. It's really easy to set one of these as your background. Just click the link closest to your screen resolution below a picture to save it to your hard drive. Then (if you're using Windows XP) right-click on your desktop, select "Properties," go to the "Desktop" tab, hit the "Browse" button, select the image from wherever you just saved it, and click "Apply" and "Okay".

Your screen resolution is .

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This Isonychia bicolor nymph from the Catskills displays the prominent white stripe sometimes characteristic of its species. This is the first such specimen I've photographed, because members of the same species in the Upper Midwest have a more subdued stripe (and were once thought to be a different species, Isonychia sadleri). The striking coloration on this eastern nymph is more appealing.

This desktop background was created from a picture of this Isonychia bicolor Mayfly Nymph.


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I collected this female together with a male.

This desktop background was created from a picture of this Female Isonychia bicolor Mayfly Spinner.


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This desktop background was created from a picture of this Female Epeorus vitreus Mayfly Spinner.


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I found this lone Hexagenia atrocaudata dun fluttering by herself on the surface of a small, still stretch of river one evening as I paddled home from fishing for smallmouths in the warm August weather.

This desktop background was created from a picture of this Female Hexagenia atrocaudata Mayfly Dun.


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This desktop background was created from a picture of this Nigronia serricornis Hellgrammite Larva.


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This is my favorite underwater picture so far. It shows a bunch of Simuliidae (black fly) larvae clinging to a rock and swinging in the fast current. There are also at least four visible mayfly nymphs, probably in the family Baetidae.

This desktop background was created from this underwater picture.


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I'm not sure of the species of this female spinner, and unfortunately I never found the associated males or duns to aid in identification. The egg-laying flight and fall of fairly large clouds of these females caused good rises of choosy trout for a week or so around early July on a large, cold spring creek in the northwoods. There is a distinctive stripe down the female's back, identical to that on this specimen collected a month later.

This desktop background was created from a picture of this Female Ephemerellidae Mayfly Spinner.


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View from the Elliott Highway not far north of Fairbanks, on my way up to the Dalton.

This desktop background was created from this picture.

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Jargon Defined:

Dun: Mayflies have two adult stages. They first emerge from the water as duns (scientifically known as the subimago stage). They then molt into the spinner (imago) stage, in which they mate and die. Sometimes the word "dun" is confusingly used to refer to a brownish gray color in fly tying materials.

Larvae: Many classes of aquatic insects, such as caddisflies, midges, craneflies, dobsonflies, alderflies, and many more, are known as "larvae" rather than "nymphs" in their juvenile stages. They have mostly soft bodies rather than hard exoskeletons. These insects also advance through a "pupa" stage before reaching adulthood.

Nymph: The juvenile, underwater stages of mayflies, stoneflies, dragonflies, and damselflies and other aquatic insects whose juvenile stages are covered by hard exoskeletons. The word can also refer to the fishing flies which imitate these creatures, in which case it is used as a blanket term for flies imitating any underwater stage of an invertebrate (except for crayfish and leeches).

Spinner: There are two winged stages of adult mayflies. They emerge from the water as duns, molt on land (usually) into their fully mature stage, spinners. As spinners, they mate, lay eggs, and die.