[one_half]Praying Mantis
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[one_half_last]Praying Mantis
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So I don’t only have nasty aphids, ants and cutworm in my garden, today I was ecstatic to find a baby Praying Mantis! Happy Days! What these photos do prove though is that I desperately need a Macro Lens for for the Canon EOS 550D I am using.
I found this little guy whilst watering and loving my Gardenias early this evening (hence the darkness of the photographs). My Gardenias are looking about 100% better than they did last week which I attribute to the spraying with Epsom Salts and coffee grounds fertilising I did last Sunday. Its pretty amazing how well they have responded to the extra TLC. I’ve wondered for a while why this particular bed is virtually pest-free. I’ve never seen an aphid on any of the plants in this bed … could it be the Praying Mantises? This one is a baby, he is tiny, but if there is a baby there must be a Mom somewhere … and maybe a few brothers and sisters?
Praying mantises eat insects and other invertebrates such as other mantises, beetles, butterflies, spiders, crickets, grasshoppers and even spiders. If they could leave the spiders and butterflies, that would be nice, but I welcome this little family to my garden.