Gosh, it’s been, what, six whole hours since I’ve posted anything about the resident mantids? I cannot apologize enough – I know how you must feel.
Okay, it’s been a bit longer than that, and in fact, this first image was taken nine days ago and not posted then. [See what I did there? I prefaced with hyperbole and followed with a contrasting statement, and now another post about mantises suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. You cannot spell manipulative without Al – well, sorta.]
On the same lily blossom that we’ve seen before, though showing even more of its age now, a Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) also performed a modeling session, completely unprompted – there seems to be something about the plants on the deck, and the lily in particular. I’d be inclined to say that it’s because the flower attracts pollinators and thus food for the mantids, except that I have never seen a pollinator even near them, and now they’re well past attracting such anyway.
The Carolina mantis species is smaller than the Chinese mantis, differently colored, and for reasons unknown, seem to be considerably less common, at least in both areas that I’ve been shooting in routinely. I have no preference for either, really, though getting the detail shots of the larger species is always easier. Carolina mantises seem to have an ‘urban camouflage’ color scheme, and by extension may prefer plants on which they blend in better, which we may not have in the immediate vicinity. Or they may normally be so good at camouflage that I simply do not see the dozens that abound, which would be a blow to my observational ego to be sure.
The difference in sizes is now readily apparent among the various mantids in the area, showing that some are more adept at finding food than others (you can compare sizes against the images in the previously linked post, or linked again right here.) Two that I thought had moved on suddenly reappeared last night when I misted the Japanese maple, making me suspect they’d simply been hiding from the heat – it’s been a while since the last rain now. But one in particular has moved ahead of the others.
The Chinese mantis (Tenodera aridifolia sinensis) on the rose bush was found during a watering session around midnight the other night, displaying the newly extended wings from a recent molt. They’re still not dry in this photo, which is why they appear a little unkempt; they’re also paler than they will be when dry, which we’ll get to shortly. The wings don’t become this big, or functional, until the final instar, the reproducing adult phase, so now the quest is on to find a mate.
Also notable, to me anyway, is that even this late at night, it is not displaying the dark eyes that are typical of mantids after sunset, leading me to believe that the act of molting affects this in some way. It is not particularly surprising, in that they will not be actively hunting for a period of time before and after the molt, because it takes up so much of their effort and their chitin has to dry and harden afterward, but it implies that the change in eye color is not as automatic as I suspected. Plus, I guess the additional camouflage cannot hurt.
The old exoskeleton was not immediately obvious – it usually can be found attached to a branch very close to the newly-emerged adult – but a quick search on the ground revealed it in the grass.
The head is towards the bottom in this shot and hiding behind a blade of grass, thought the antenna is easily spotted, but what I want to draw attention to is the wings – that’s them along the body by the legs, slightly darker than the skin of the abdomen to which the legs are attached. Yes, those wings above came out of these little sleeves – it always amazes me. In fact, the entire insect always seems to emerge much bigger than it was before the molt, and I’ve seen this often enough that I don’t think I’m imagining it, or mistaking the drying, shrinking exoskeleton that it just discarded as falsely representing the original size. One of these days I’ll have distinct measurements for before and after (and maybe even capture the process from beginning to end) to establish this once and for all. But it’s pretty obvious that the wings themselves undergo just a wee bit of expansion.
Ten hours later, the wings were dry and displaying the adult coloration, as well as presumably being functional – I am guessing this is a female who will be waiting for an acceptable male to find her, especially since she seems to like the rose bush. I am not going to discourage this in any way, since it would be easy to find an egg sac should she place it there, and may well give me the opportunity to photograph her producing it. Measured just now for this post, the mantis is about 86mm in length (3.5 inches) from the head to the wingtips, quite a change from the 10mm that they typically are when hatched. She won’t get a whole lot bigger than this, though she (if I have the sex right) will get considerably broader until producing the eggs. Keep checking back with me, and we’ll see what happens.
I just have to mention this, though it has nothing to do with the topic. This past weekend, our friends stopped by for a brief visit on their way to the beach, and the adolescent girls got to see this particular mantis. I had to inform them that it molted out just a couple of days after they’d left, depriving them of the opportunity to see it. In response, I get back word that they had gotten to see baby sea turtles emerging from the nest and paddling into the ocean. The single blurry photo they’d forwarded, taken at dusk with a telephoto lens past the crowd, was enough to send The Girlfriend into an uncontrollable bout of baby talk, so I can’t imagine what seeing the real thing would have done. But yeah, that whole ‘cute’ thing again…
The other night, a Copes grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) was found clinging to the stem of a cherry tomato plant on the deck, producing a pose that seemed to be evocative of something, but I haven’t pinned down what – perhaps I should hold a caption contest (you might as well send one in – with the dearth of comments you’re pretty much guaranteed to win something.)
I am identifying this as a Copes grey treefrog, but visually, they are impossible to tell apart from a common grey treefrog; the reason I offer this identification with such supreme and unflagging confidence is that, from the calls that I hear during the rainy nights, this is the only species that seems to be in the area. Copes have a 
And finally, it’s not a complete week without spiders, so I offer a subtle crab spider hanging out on a pokeweed blossom. This one is considerably larger than 
So, for this Monday color we have an image that’s faintly unsettling to me. Not for any peculiar associations I have with the Digitalis family (though in truth we haven’t gotten along since that incident at the airport,) but because the color seems off, and not able to be corrected in any way. It has the appearance of something that had originally been shot in monochrome, like in the ’40s, and was later colorized – just not quite there, not ringing true. For instance, look at the leaves and stems at the base of the blooms; that hue of green lacks vibrancy and authenticity. In most cases when seeing this, I would tweak the color away from blue, but then that seems to change the color of the blossoms away from an accurate rendition of those. And it’s possible that the greens of this particular plant really were this hue.
Most of the time recently, the skies are so clear at sunrise that they’re boring, lacking in rich colors and clouds to throw some textures into the mix. But this morning looked like it was going to be different, so I trotted over to the pond to see what would develop as the sun came into view. While the sky did not quite produce the qualities that I was hoping for, I received the cooperation of a double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) which has taken up residence in the pond now, sharing it with a great blue heron or two, a green heron, and a cluster of Canada geese.
A few days back when I’d first spotted the cormorant, it was sitting quite close to shore on a log, and wasn’t terribly concerned with my presence, though it was plainly aware of me and likely would have preferred that I not be around. So far everything I’ve been able to get has been backlit, which is a shame, because cormorants have the most brilliant jade green eyes. It’s curious, actually; most of the raptors have yellow or brown eyes, and for the songbirds brown is the norm. Sandhill cranes have orange eyes, white ibis have blue, wood ducks have red, but cormorants are the only ones with green eyes to my knowledge (which, it must be said, is not comprehensive by any stretch.) If I don’t manage to get any close and well-lit shots showing the eyes soon, I’ll dig out some slides that I have which illustrates the color nicely. In fact, probably much better than the digital camera does – the color register of Fuji Provia and Velvia film beats the hell out of any digital camera or setting that I’ve come across, and if I had the ability to process it at home conveniently, I’d probably be using film more often. As it is, it’s getting difficult to find processing services, and more expensive – at some point I’ll do a post about “convenient mediocrity.”
I’ll leave you with another version of the cormorant poses – still trying to decide which one I like the best. This one was tweaked a little to bring the background trees slightly brighter, giving a little more texture to the whole image. I’m wondering if I should have tried using fill-flash for this one as well, to bring out a little detail from the bird rather than rendering it a simple silhouette, but I’m not sure the flash would have produced enough light for that distance. I need to think about these things while I’m shooting, though, and not afterward when I’m looking at the images…
Last year, I 
Of course I had to see what happened with my resident praying mantises; they appear to be a tad more reflective than the plants, but nothing spectacular. And of course, expecting them to hold still during the long exposure time is a foolish pursuit.
So, this one was spotted tonight traipsing around on the sea oat plant soon after I’d watered it, and I shamelessly coaxed it immediately next door onto The Girlfriend’s prized calla lily, where it took its cue like an old pro and provided several fetching poses right atop the fading blossom (I hadn’t even put it there – you gotta love cooperation.) This one is medium sized, which means about 6 cm in body length – there are both far larger and far smaller examples in the yard right now. Some of them must be getting towards final instar, the breeding adult phase, and I feel confident that we’ll have at least one egg cluster someplace in the yard to keep an eye on next spring. I’ll just have to locate it…
Sometimes, the angle and pose come together just right to produce an evocative expression from, really, a species that can’t actually change expression. The tilt of the head and the shape of the eyes, even the dipped antenna, just says to me, “Boah, you got a permit for that?”
