Of Mums and Mantids

I was outside taking a walk around the yard and snapping a few pictures earlier today. I had planned on working in the yard some but it was a cold and blustery 55° and too cold for me to stay out for very long.


While outside, I stopped to look at the mums and noticed a praying mantis.



As I was standing there, a fly landed nearby and I watched to see if the mantis was going to attempt to catch it.



It did, but missed. I wonder if insects have the capability to think. I could just imagine this one whining and having a little temper tantrum because it missed an opportunity for lunch.




It certainly gave me a look...



and it's probably a very good thing I don't know what it's thinking!!!

Praying Mantis Rumors Dispelled

Nearly every morning I drink my coffee in front of the window and as a fun challenging game, I try to spot the mantids on the flowers. (Do you see the one on the sunflower above and on the verbena below?) I also do this so I can keep an eye on them during the day in case they catch their prey.

For some reason I have a lot of praying mantids in my flower gardens. I was glad to see them early in the spring because I thought them to be very beneficial insects. I was very pleased when saw them on my shrubs eating smaller bugs and harmful insects.

As they got larger they were no longer content to eat the smaller bugs and began stalking larger prey. I've worked diligently this year to attract butterflies and hummingbirds to my flower gardens, planting specific things to attract them. So I wasn't at all pleased to see the praying mantis stalking the things that were bringing me so much delight and were also beneficial pollinators as well. The mantis that seemed intent on stalking the hummingbirds, that I posted about in the link above, met her untimely demise after being knocked off the hummingbird feeder with a broom five times and seeing her attempt it for the sixth time. It was determined to catch a hummingbird but I was more determined that it did not.

I mentioned the feeder incident to my neighbor and she asked me if I had killed the mantis, I told her that I had. She proceeded to tell me that it is illegal, in the state of Indiana to kill a praying mantis. She said when her children were in school they did a bug collecting project and were not allowed to collect mantids because the teacher said it was illegal to do so. I had not heard this before, so I did a Google and found that this is an urban legend that has been around since the 1950's. It is not illegal, nor has it ever been illegal, to capture or kill a praying mantis.

In my search on the mantis I also ran across another rumor. My picture of the mating mantids above proves this one is not true. The female does not rip the males head off to initiate mating. I do wish I had checked back on these two to see if she ate him afterwards. I have read that this also is a rare occurrence for mantids in the wild, and usually only those females in captivity do this to ensure they have enough nourishment for their young.
This mantis was also promptly relieved of her gardening duties after being caught with a butterfly.
There was so much controversy over my post about feeding hummingbirds, that I have hesitated doing this post on the praying mantis for fear that some will be upset that I actually killed a few. As several people told me in the hummingbird post, this is my yard and I should have in it what I want. I have decided the praying mantis is not welcome here, they are not well behaved guests, instead they are pests.

Preying Mantis

The praying mantis are getting pretty big and are no longer content to eat the small bugs in the garden. Now they are after larger prey. This one above keeps getting on the hummingbird feeder in the front yard, (yes, I'm still feeding the hummingbirds, but now I have two feeders, story to come later). I've knocked it off with the broom three times already today and it keeps climbing back up. I've seen it actually grabbing at the unsuspecting hummingbirds. Thankfully they are too fast and so far it hasn't harmed any. I had seen a story about a praying mantis eating a hummingbird, I guess it may be more common than I thought for the mantis to eat something as large as a hummingbird. I'm very glad that no hummers were eaten here today. Now if I can just keep deterring those pesky mantids until the hummingbirds fly south.
This one is in the backyard and stayed very still under the verbena stalking butterflies and hummingbirds. I knocked it down after it almost caught a silver spotted skipper.
I've been glad to have the mantis in my garden, and really felt that it was a beneficial insect. Now that it's larger it is becoming a pest and try to eat things that I consider to be more beneficial, the pollinators. Not a good trade off as far as I'm concerned.

I also saw this really large hawk, I believe it may be a Coopers hawk, since we have had those around before. It was diving in my back neighbors shrubs and trees looking for smaller birds.

Praying Mantis

I've seen several praying mantis on my Japanese maples, but I had never seen them eating anything, until today. I spotted this one eating a beetle, at first I thought it was eating a ladybug, but after doing a bit of searching on the net, this beetle looked like a cucumber beetle. I've seen these beetles on my purple coneflowers; they are yellow with black spots and they have elongated bodies. It was so cool to finally catch one eating!


Here is the lamppost project I did the night before my trip. I still have to add some soil and amendments, and tidy up the back edges, and I'm still thinking about what else to plant. Since we're so far into the summer, I'm not quite sure what to do.