www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

When it's a praying mantis



These are not the only predators lying in wait for my local butterflies. Here is a spider wrapping up a Christmas present ...



... and here are some he (or she - I don't know) had already wrapped:


(Clouded yellow and wall brown)


(painted lady)


(some caterpillar and a Queen of Spain fritillary)
Edit: I think that might be a bumble bee, not a caterpillar...


(I think this is another Queen of Spain)

That was just one spider, and he had more in his (or her) store!

On a lighter note, I finally found a brown hairstreak today:



Guy

Interesting series of pictures, the spider is a female wasp spider - Argiope bruennichi. The male like most male spiders is a lot smaller and brown.
We have these in the UK, but they are an introduction.

Thanks, Mike. I did think she looked like a female, on general principles (big, fat abdomen &c.), but I don't know much about spiders at all.

We've just had a week of good weather, which is soon to break. I guess she's been making hay while the sun shines.

Guy

Guy
I photographed this one a couple of years ago in Hants. The victim looks like a meadow brown.



....which raises the question - if you saw a butterfly fly into a web, would you try to rescue it or let nature take its course?
Alex

I'm afraid I leave butterflies to their fate when I see them in a predator's grasp.

I don't think there is an absolute rule, 'Thou shalt not interfere in nature', because we are part of nature and just by existing we interfere with the creatures around us. But on the whole, do-gooding busybodies (I don't mean you, Alex, whether or not you free butterflies! ) do more harm than good, and rely on judgments they have no right to make.

If I saw a chimpanzee impaling a squirrel on a spike and laughing maliciously I would probably intervene, but such things rarely happen.

Guy

but what if it was a grey squirrel ?

I'm actually a great fan of grey squirrels. True, they're not native, but their introduction was hardly their fault. True, they have a deleterious effect on certain bird populations - but not nearly as disastrous an effect as humans have had. They are charming, intelligent, entertaining creatures whose persecution by sometimes hideously cruel means (like warfarin) is unacceptable to me. I'd rather they hadn't been introduced, but now they're here I think we should learn to love them.

There is only one real enemy at loose in the British countryside and it is H. sapiens.

Guy

alex mclennan wrote:....which raises the question - if you saw a butterfly fly into a web, would you try to rescue it or let nature take its course?

Well, I've interfered twice, but I would not call that rescue...

For Guy. Shot today testing out a newly acquired antique Sigma 400mm.

Thanks, Eccles! That's a brilliant picture - I guess you must be very pleased with your new equipment!

I'd offer a prize for the first person to take a photograph with a butterfly and a squirrel in it but sadly I can't afford to buy a prize.

Guy

Thanks Guy. It needs plenty of light but it's not a bad bit of glass. I got it on ebay for £66 including postage. Then just my luck, another popped up two days later and went for £55.

padfield wrote:I'm actually a great fan of grey squirrels.

Guy

i am a big fan of ..... black squirrels !!



they are quite common in this part of Cambridgeshire ...this youngster was in our garden

Charles

Wow - I didn't know there were black squirrels in England! In fact, most (but not all) 'red' squirrels here in the Alps are dark brown or black. Here is one I got on video in 2004:



This is an adult, with tufty ears. It is hiding while my dog walks past but can't resist the temptation to have a peek...

Guy

what a funny expression on the squirrel's face !!

charles

Black squirrels are cool! I never seen one, but I have seen dark red ones and they are nice. I still like grey squirrels, but just for what they do to local red ones, I don't know.

My dad was telling me that one day, he was in a room in this mansion and two squirrels came to window nd one stood on his foot and it never moved for a while.

alex mclennan wrote:....which raises the question - if you saw a butterfly fly into a web, would you try to rescue it or let nature take its course?

Surely, you have to let nature take it's course? Otherwise, you're condemning the spider to starvation. Ditto dragonflies and mantises. Come to that, would you try to drag an Impala out of a Lion's grasp?

I felt uncomfortable taking photos of butterflies captured by predators, but I guess that’s how nature works and that we humans should just observe and not interfere.

Many butterflies seem to fall prey to crab spiders that lurk in flowers head and wait for their victims. Some seem to be camouflaged according to the colour of the flower, but I’d be interested to hear if this is actually the case or just co-incidence.

Here are two crab spider shots: 1033 is a female large white (pieris brassicae) where you can just see the spider’s legs at the head end, and the unnatural angle of the butterfly’s head indicates that something is wrong. Often if you get too close and a butterfly doesn’t fly off as expected, it’s because it can’t. 2496 is a female ilex hairstreak (satyrium ilicis) that had been seized by a crab spider, but it did have the effect of revealing the upperside which would not otherwise be seen as these satyrium species always rest with closed wings. I believe that 2496 is a female ilicis (and I’m guessing based on the extent of the orange patch) of the form cerri which has extensive orange patches on the forewing.




7684: this large vivid-red beetle has what seems to be a hairstreak, probably ilex.


4327: this still gives me the creeps. I don’t know what the predator is, but it was perfectly camouflaged, and indeed it was quite hard to see even when it was clear that something was holding the unfortunate bergers clouded yellow (colias alfacariensis) and munching its way through it.


I think we would count ourselves lucky that these monsters come butterfly-sized, not human-sized!

Dead right, thank goodness they're only inches long, not feet!! Think the beast that has the Clouded Yellow is a Mantis, but not une I've seen before.

The mantis holding the Berger's clouded yellow is a nymph of Empusa pennata - identified as nymph or adult by the projection ('crest') on the head, recalling something one might see on a dinosaur!!

There is, of course, a human-sized praying mantis in episode 4 of Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if anyone wants to know what one looks like.

Guy

See:

http://www.monanneeaucollege.com/page-i ... ennata.htm

Guy