Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Mantises

Last September, my husband brought me a mantis egg case he found while working in the yard.

September 26, 2012

The ootheca was attached to a dried Nandina heavenly bamboo branch which I placed in a small vase on the kitchen counter for a few weeks...


until I moved the branch to a pot of dirt outside on the patio table where I could see the egg case from the window.  On April 23, about a dozen tiny green mantises were crawling on the branch.

April 23, 2013



Over the next week dozens more mantis nymphs emerged from the egg case.







April 26, 2013

This morning I found just one little mantis on the flower pot.

19 comments:

betchai said...

oh, what a very beautiful and so priceless gift, thanks for sharing this gift to us through your pictures. love your vase too. wish someone will give me this kind of gift too :) and hope I will be as successful as you in bringing out life.

Annie Jeffries said...

omigosh. shocked me. very glad the little guys were outside when they decided to emerge. amazing pictures.

Anonymous said...

Hello! Very interesting post!

DeniseinVA said...

Lucky us and I thank you for sharing these amazing photos. I have never seen anything like these. Never knew what a praying mantis egg sac looked like, though I have always been fascinated by the praying mantis. Wonderful post!

Janie said...

Very cool. Mantises are so cute when they're little. We see egg casings every year. I'll have to try keeping an eye on one to see if it hatches.

angryparsnip said...

This is such an interesting post. Very brave of you to have the egg case in your home.
I am always trying to keep out the critters small and big who are always trying to come in my home.

Wonderful photos.

cheers, parsnip

cieldequimper said...

That's amazing!

Thérèse said...

What a fun bunch. I never saw so many little ones together. You must have enjoyed them so much!

PJ van Zyl said...

awesome share

Stephanie said...

Oh this is beautiful! Love how you careful you observe the egg hatching and the little babies came crawling out. This is my first time seeing how mantises come out from their egg... and one egg wow!

Darla said...

Can something be exquisite and spectacular at the same time? I think so and this was it! This was indeed a precious gift -- thank you for sharing! I was deep inside the earth this morning, deep in darkness, stillness, heaviness (though not sadness) and these photos lit my face with a smile, my bones became luminescent, and the weighty earth fell away like fluffy loam! :-)))

Loree said...

How amazing to witness something like that. Those baby mantises made me smile.

Barb said...

Magical! My grandchildren would be mesmerized! (I love the mantis babies!)

Betty Manousos said...

beautiful and very well photographed!

have a great weekend, dear diane!

RIZALENIO said...

Wow! The miracle of life. I enjoyed this entry a lot. First time for me to see something like this documented in photos.

Happy weekend! :)

Magia da Inês said...

¸.•°✿✿⊱彡

Olá, passei para uma visitinha.
Interessante, é a natureza!!!

Ótima semana!
Beijinhos.
Brasil.°✿⊱彡
¸.•°✿✿⊱彡

ZielonaMila said...

Beautiful photos, fantastic compositions:) Greetings

Magpie said...

This is amazing! I'm feeling lonely for my blogging buddies and there you all are...right where I left you. ;)

Phioxee said...

ive never seen a mantis egg with a lot of mantis coming out.