Englishman in Bandung

By Vodkaman

Battle of the Mantids

Huge response to yesterday's damsel blip, so many hearts and stars. Thank you all for the encouragement.

Great safari today with 24 keepers in just over an hour, although quite a few of them were mantis shots. I spotted the flower mantis on the flower head, waiting for breakfast to show up. Even though I already have a lot of flower mantis shots, I decided to see if anything special could be captured and settled down for half an hour of mantis watching.

I moved him around and wiggled my finger for some face shots, he wasn't being very co-operative, so I sat down and waited in the hope of some action shots.

To my surprise, I noticed another flower mantis working its way up the flower stem. Mantids are definitely not social creatures and will happily devour each other, so I figured that this was probably going to be some mating action. Eventually the intruder made it to the flower and laid an arm on the back of the resident mantis and all was calm for a minute. 'I hope this isn't one of those all-day things' I was thinking.

Then all hell broke loose as the intruder grabbed the resident and they battled like crazy. I took a bunch of shots, but I was not expecting action like this, I was set up for static shots, so most were a blur of arms and legs, but one shot came out OK as they must have paused for a split second. Definitely not mating then!

So very close to losing the battle with the death bite to the neck only a few millimeters away, the resident managed to flip around and the intruder rapidly retreated. The resident mantis opened its wings to show a spectacular display, appearing as a most fearsome creature with huge eyes. "BIG mistake buddy" was the message.

As the intruder retreated, he also flashed his wings to a lesser degree, all the time looking back to make sure their was no final ambush. When a respectable distance away, the intruder turned one last time, opened his wings and splayed his front legs with a broadside view to appear as big as possible, as if to say "You were lucky that I have already eaten this morning"!

Well, that was quite an experience. From that moment on I was just praying to the blip monster to let one of the shots be in focus. Phew!

Update - a few blippers have mentioned that it is difficult to see what is going on, as their camouflage is so effective and the second mantis is not in the focal plane. I guess you have to go large to see it properly.

Update - identification, jeweled flower mantis - Creobroter gemmatus

Dave

Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.