Posting is still slow – I’m finding a lot of my time taken up with other things, boring things from a blogging perspective – but I’m trying to keep up with images at the same time. There will be another post featuring various arthropods coming shortly, but for now I’m going to focus on just one.
One of the many mantises that had inhabited the Japanese maple has now switched
Yeah, that title’s fairly similar to a post from about a year ago, but the difference is significant. That one was about a fly with a maze-like pattern in its eyes (thus, “lost,” get it?) while this one really does involve depth. I spend hours on these titles…
Anyone who’s had a close enough encounter with a praying mantis knows about the false pupil, even if they haven’t
For anyone, should they actually exist, who has been stopping by and not finding any new posts, I apologize. On occasion, circumstances inhibit sitting down and working on posts, and this particular occasion was a move. We are now in a new house!
I take no credit for this whatsoever it was all The Girlfriend’s accomplishment. Well, okay, that sounds like I didn’t even
I had to wash off some things outside a short while ago, and while draining the hose, I set the sprayer for ‘mist’ and applied a liberal coating to grasses where I knew some of the praying mantises lived I was rewarded with seeing one of them scamper up and begin drinking deeply from the water droplets adhering to the leaves. Of course, I trotted (it might have been
I’m still here, and still largely busy – it’s going to be a lean posting month, but I’ll still try to put something up from time to time.
[“From time to time” – isn’t that a stupid phrase? Who makes these things up, and did they have any think what word good is?]
A few days back we received torrential rain, which is not to say this is any more remarkable
The newborn Chinese mantids have begun to disperse into different locations I have spotted them not only on the azalea bush neighboring the one they were born within, but many meters away near other flowers and on the dog fennel plants. This makes me self-conscious, because they
I decided to try and answer a couple of questions raised in the post about the newborn mantids, so I went out and collected the debris that was still hanging from the egg sac, that the newborns had been suspended from immediately after emergence. The first thing to become apparent was that it hung from a webbing
I had a post in draft form wherein I mentioned that I was keeping my eye on the egg case of the Chinese mantises (Tenodera aridifolia sinensis,) figuring it was due to erupt at any time. This morning, that post was ruined.
I was just about to head off to meet with a student when I took a last look at the egg case, and found it almost literally dripping with newborn mantids. I quickly got the camera
I have to admit, I’m really not one for rating things, especially comparatively – top ten lists and all that are not for me. I did it last year, mostly because a prominent blogger would feature any such posts on his own blog as a bit of promotion, so it was blatant opportunism. If you’re here because you found my blog from that link and are still following it, cool, it worked!
When you spend all spring and summer tracking the praying mantids that have hatched and taken up residence locally, naturally you want to see the whole cycle, and that means the production of the egg sac as well. Of course, they’re not inclined to do this for an audience, so a bit of luck is involved, luck that I did not have this year. I watched one particular female