MORE Praying Mantis Pics!

I took most of these pics this past weekend, but haven't had a chance to post them in this blog until now.  Got some more good shots.  I'm sure National Geographic will be calling me any second....

Love the colors....and the winged male Praying Mantis:

Or this female:

"Hello, Bug.  Isn't this a pretty flower?  Perhaps you should take a much CLOSER LOOK?"

I also have some yellow Hummingbird Vines...so I had to get this next picture.  I had watched this Mantis go after a wasp.  It caught the wasp, and I hoped to get a picture of the Mantis eating the wasp...but the wasp somehow managed to escape.  Here, the Mantis was cleaning up.  Maybe the wasp SMELLED BAD?

This next one was up on our porch, right on the patio furniture.  It was posing.  I took this picture:

...and then took this next couple of pictures...one without a flash, one with:

Although there was a high density of Mantises (Manti?) on one of the bushes in our backyard, they were mostly females.  I figured my chances of  spotting a pair mating were very small.  And then I saw it!

I had to use the flash light up this steamy scene:

The male Mantis was still healthy.  I'd heard that after copulation, the female Mantis will eat the male Mantis...or at least its head.  I wasn't going to wait around potentially for hours to find out.

Luck was with me.  The next day, about 35' further down the fenceline on another bush, I spotted a different female eating a male!  And it was just in the middle of eating the head!

This next series of 3 images was a Mantis that was watching a butterfly on a nearby flower stem.

It started to make a move on the butterfly:

As butterflies are prone to do, this one didn't stick around long.  The dejected look on the Mantises face is priceless.  I don't know if he was embarrassed that I'd witnessed his failure, or mad that perhaps I had caused it!  Yes...I know I'm anthropomorphizing the situation.

The rest of these pictures I just thought turned out well and were good shots: