An important part of creating a healthy, organic garden space is supporting a well-balanced ecosystem. That can’t be done with the use of pesticides and other biocides because they, by design, create imbalance. There are insects and small animals that feed on unwelcomed garden visitors like aphids and slugs, so if there are no aphids […]
Tag: praying mantis
A gallery of Chobe’s feathers
In this post I have chosen to let the images talk for themselves rather than tell stories. This post is a gallery and hope fully the images are enough. This gallery shows you the wonderful variety of birdlife you can see along the Chobe river. As I have mentioned in earlier posts on this trip, […]
Praying Mantises Released for Pest Control Are Hunting Hummingbirds
New research documents that mantises worldwide are eating small birds; in the US, invasive mantis species are devouring hummingbirds. If the headline weren’t startling enough, the photos are even worse. There is an order to predators and prey that feels normal – like, birds eat insects. And when the script it flipped it can feel […]
Camouflaged!
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” Henry Miller
Camouflage 101…
The art of camouflage is one of the primary defensive weapons in the arsenal of nature’s many and varied creatures. Clearly, this little Praying Mantis was absent for that lesson, and his bright pink coloration stood out like a sore thumb among the cool green tones of the lush rain forrest. Parc National d’Odzala-Kokoua, Republic […]
Tiny Praying Mantis
I took this photo in June 2012. A miniature praying mantis is sitting on my thumb.It is a praying mantis nymph, an immature stage, and a very cute example of how insects grow. There are two kinds of insect metamorphosis: complete (also called holometabolic) and incomplete (also called partial orhemimetabolic). The monarch butterfly is a […]
In Search of a Map
Her eyes scan the new landscape in search of a map a flower‘s cosmology ready for misadventures. Chinese Praying Mantis | Tenodera aridifolia sinensis