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:

More Praying Mantises, 8-22-2012

Saw this Praying Mantis on our garbage bin on 8/21, its the first fully winged adult (female) I've seen this year.

Before I went fishing on 8/22, I checked one bush in the backyard to see if any mantises were around.  I immediately spotted this one, which had just caught a small butterfly (it was still wiggling) and was starting to eat it:

Here, he stopped long enough to look at me:

And then I spotted this brown one on the same bush about 3 feet away:

A bit further on, was this one hanging underneath a flower pod:

I walked around to the far side of the bush, and saw this pair of grasshoppers:

About 15 inches away, they were being watched by this one:

...which turned his head when he saw my foot move:

Yep....its cool how these guys are watch you and are AWARE of you!

Backyard Critters, August 2012

I had only (finally) just recently spotted a single Praying Mantis in our backyard.  First Praying Mantis sighting of the year for me.  I had hoped to see some earlier in the season, because most of our flowering plants were getting POUNDED by an overabundance of Japanese Beetles.  The Japanese Beetles have become such a pest, I decided NOT to photograph them.  Take THAT!  :)

So, on a recent weekend day, I saw butterfly on one of the Butterfly Bushes, grabbed my camera and went out to take some "critter photos".  As has happened so many times in the past couple of years, I was holding the camera at chest level looking for a subject to capture, when a Hummingbird showed up about arms length in front and above me.  He (she?) just hovered there checking me out.  What a picture that could have been!  But any small movement from me would send the tiny bird quickly on its way.  So...again, no picture of the Hummingbird.

I did eventually spot at least 5 or 6 Praying Mantises in the backyard, and collected these photos of them and other "critters".

A Monarch Butterfly:

A huge Bumble Bee, with a Praying Mantis "on the side":

A couple more Bumble Bee pics....I feel safe when they are like this:

But they seem a little more scary when you see them "head-on":

One thing that NEVER seems scary are the various butterflies:

Some of the Dragonflies are pretty big.  It'd be fun to get a picture of one eating something it had caught.

Jumpy Jumpy Grasshopper:

The critters with the most interesting personalities has to be the Praying Mantises, though.  Something about the way they WATCH you:

...or how they like to hang around upside down:

The one was the only brown one I saw:

The rest were green:

The coolest thing is watching them HUNT.  Check out this series:

Butterfly lands on a flower stalk NEAR the Praying Mantis.  Mantis watches with wishful thoughts...

Butterfly lands on the same flower as the Praying Mantis.  See the Mantis??  He makes to stalk up the far side of the flower stalk:

Butterfly changes course.   Mantis re-evaluates situation:

Mantis makes a move..."Slow down, ya winged bag o' nectar!"

 No photos of the gory bloodbath of a successful kill this time. The butterfly flew off again to another flower stem, leaving the Mantis to reconsider its tactics.  "Phooey!"

I did watch another Mantis go after a wasp that landed on a flower.  The Mantis made the grab, but didn't have a good enough hold, and the wasp flew away, wondering about what it was that had just tried to grab it.