The other day I commented that the immortal (so far) Mr Bugg had failed to beat me to the punch in posting something from our mutual outing before I did. What I was forgetting was that he apparently lives across two international date lines, so while it was Sunday here, it was Friday there. Thus, he still managed to post a day ahead of me, we just had to wait another day to see it…
Regardless, yesterday’s outing (or was it Wednesday’s?) netted us only a small collection of images, one of those slower days that you (now) read about, and I’m largely going to skip this one to talk about the previous, which had at least more fartsy stuff going for it. For now, I’ll simply show an image of a still-small Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) that peeped out from a stand of tall native plants in the NC Botanical Garden. Despite it being less than 4 cm in length, which seems quite small for this time of year, I was able to spot this one without too much difficulty since it was in largely the same place that I’d seen it 20 days earlier. Mantids may do this, hanging out in almost the exact same location for a few days to a few weeks, before moving on to another location not far off. Of course, I may be assuming a lot here, including that it had not moved off and come back through, or that this was the same mantis. I’m bad enough recognizing people I’ve met only briefly, and won’t claim any better skills with arthropods.
Meanwhile, I’ll add in another perspective, showing Mr Bugg (the human) in action getting his own shots. I was careful to frame the mantis against his shirt so that it stood out noticeably, but even then you have to be paying close attention. It shows scale nicely, though.
