So as I said last year, I was endeavoring to photograph a Chinese mantis creating an egg sac, or ootheca, and never managed it. Actually, in all my years of chasing hexapods, I’ve done it just once – one lousy frame. Last fall, I had a likely candidate
Tag: Stagmomantis carolina
Wait, we’re one short!
I had said earlier that, after an auspicious start, I thought I could do a post for every day of October, and had intended to post this one yesterday, so the month end abstract would bring us up to the full 31 posts this morning. Alas, the day at work yesterday was horrendous, running quite late, and I was exhausted and actually in pain when I got home late yesterday afternoon,
Mason Farm 2: Arachnidy
We now return to Mason Farm Biological Reserve, only not really because all these photos were taken during one visit that’s already days past now, so all we’re doing is seeing more photos – vacation slides from your creepy neighbor. And as the name implies (well, outright announces,) it’s gonna be spider heavy.
Part of this is because, late in the season and with chilly nights,
Accomplishments and not
Tallying up the posts and uploaded images for the month of September, I find that not only did I set a record for the year-to-date for images posted (127,) but it would only take seven more to beat the total for any year that I’ve been posting: last year was the record-holder with 747, and I am presently at 741… with six images lined up to be included in this
It’s been… one week
I just love planting earworms like that.
But it really has been a week since the outing that I am about to relate, and the delay is partially due to a lack of free time, and partially due to wanting to clear some older photos from the blog folder first, which I did – there are six posts between now and
The secret yet eludes me
Still working through the backlog of photos, but part of the reason for stalling on these was that I was trying to produce the next chapter in the story, even going so far as to make another examination tonight before I started working on this post, to no avail.
You see, I’m trying to document the entire life cycle of a praying mantis, birth to death and everything in between,
I like these bushes
If you have the faintest interest in doing arthropod photography, you could do a lot worse than getting yourself a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) or three. They’re readily available most anywhere, come in a variety of colors, and most importantly, have a very long blossoming season while attracting a significant breadth of insects, as well as hummingbirds on occasion.
Always with the drama
As the Chinese mantises have been molting into final instar, which means reproducing adult phase, they have abandoned the plants with smaller leaves and hiding spots, relinquishing them to the smaller, later developing Carolina mantises (Stagmomantis carolina.) And of course, among the prime choices for these are the butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii,) which produce
Here and… well, here
Continuing the posting of recent-ish photos (meaning those mostly taken while I was hashing out my ignorance of PHP to make things look ‘acceptable,’) we have these various offerings from the environs immediately surrounding Walkabout Studios, what the proletariat tend to refer to as the “front and back yards” we will attempt to elevate this missive by using,
Brevity, let’s see, brevity…
You and I both know I’m not too familiar with the concept, but we’ll make the attempt, okay?
Anyway, I have a buttload of photos that I’d like to feature before I even get to the beach trip, but not enough time to do detailed posts about them, so I’ll toss down some brief descriptions and possibly send the rest over to the Latest Images page. Sound like a plan?
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