More piccies from Switzerland

[Padfield]

Snow fell on Saturday and today was bitterly cold until the afternoon. Just 9 species left on the wing in the Valley, of which 8 are British butterflies.


Wall


Queen of Spain


Clouded yellow


Clouded yellow egg


Berger's pale clouded yellow


Painted lady


Red admiral


Adonis blue


Grayling


Tree graying (the only one not on the British list)

This mantis had got herself a grasshopper!!



Guy

[Gruditch]

Some nice shots Guy, the mantis reminds me of a conversation I overheard at the AES Exhibition over the weekend. A rather posh Father telling to his son "my general feeling on a mantis is no". Even though I was in the pet trade for a number of years, there just seems to be something wrong about an 8 year old being responsible for the welfare of such a wonderful creature.

Regards Gruditch

[Padfield]

I agree with you, Gruditch! Mantises are interesting creatures with quite complex behaviour. They also fly a lot. They look something like a large grasshopper in flight, but they fly at eye level and can go quite some distance. I wouldn't like to see one in a cage (quite apart from the fact you'd have to feed it with live insects).

I had stick insects when I was a kid (rescued from a laboratory). Stick insects are nearly all females (mine were all female) and just sit around munching bramble leaves while churning out eggs, which bounce on the bottom of the cage all night and hatch out into hundreds and hundreds more stick insects... In the year I had them I never saw a male, though they can be generated (insect females are XY and males XX, so females can make males). In the end, I put my stick insects on the bramble at the bottom of the garden when we went on holiday at the end of August, knowing they would go torpid and die when the winter came. They did. But they had a pretty good life before then.

Guy

[Dave McCormick]

Good shots Guy, I definatly like the mantis. Reminds me of someone I used to know. He had a praying mantis and kept it on a big plant on his table in a room and fed it crickets and cockroaches. He even told me he ate on the same table as the mantis. Not me, I'd never have something like that on my table.

I had stick insects when I was a kid (rescued from a laboratory). Stick insects are nearly all females (mine were all female) and just sit around munching bramble leaves while churning out eggs, which bounce on the bottom of the cage all night and hatch out into hundreds and hundreds more stick insects... In the year I had them I never saw a male, though they can be generated (insect females are XY and males XX, so females can make males). In the end, I put my stick insects on the bramble at the bottom of the garden when we went on holiday at the end of August, knowing they would go torpid and die when the winter came. They did. But they had a pretty good life before then.

Reminds me of a few years back. I had stick insects. Started with two males and two females. Ended up with 100+ by the end of that year. I gave many away and ended up doing what you did, putting my last few on brambles near my house and they died in winter.

I know in australia that stick insect females just run up a tree branch and drop an egg on ground, with the end covered in a sugary substance. The eggs look like seeds and ants in area collect seeds and take them back to nest and they do same with the stick insect eggs and when they hatch, the young scoot out of the nest and up the nearest tree. After my last stick insects, I stick to rearing local butterflies/moths and not non native insects.

[Padfield]

I didn't know that about the Australian stick insects, Dave. Thanks!

What a bizarre idea - eating at table with a mantis!

They're creatures of myth and legend. Season 1, episode 4 of Buffy features a giant She-mantis looking for virginal schoolboys to mate with and decapitate.

I find them very photogenic. This is one of my favourite pictures, taken in 2007. The mantis looks just like a sheathed grass stem, apart from that alien head!



Guy

[Lee Hurrell]

Great picture Guy.

She was quite nice, the mantis teacher lady if I remember correctly. I'm halfway through season 7 at the moment!

Cheers

Lee

[Pete Eeles]

I wouldn't like to see one in a cage (quite apart from the fact you'd have to feed it with live insects).

Or reptiles I found this mantis and lizard eying each other up while on holiday in Menorca in 2002. The mantis won - which surprised me!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Padfield]

What a drama! It's a harsh world out there.

I believe that is a juvenile ocellated lizard, Lacerta lepida. It had many things still to learn about life in the brush, poor thing...

G

[Mikhail]

Guy, I think it's a Moroccan Rock Lizard Lacerta perspicillata. Known only from Minorca in Europe, where it was first noted in 1928, a presumed introduction. Ref. Collins Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Britain and Europe. A nice find, Pete.

Misha

[Padfield]

Thanks Misha - my book doesn't have that one!

Guy

[Pete Eeles]

Guy, I think it's a Moroccan Rock Lizard Lacerta perspicillata. Known only from Minorca in Europe, where it was first noted in 1928, a presumed introduction. Ref. Collins Field Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Britain and Europe. A nice find, Pete.

Misha

Typical. The only one I saw and it was a "gonner" within seconds Thanks for the info, though, very enlightening.

Cheers,

- Pete

[geniculata]

since were doing a bit of prey identification,

i wonder if misha could confirm if guys mantis is taking out a blue-winged grasshopper, not a species ive ever seen but i believe we have as resident in the channel islands.

gary.

[Padfield]

If it helps, I can confirm that the commonest flash colour for grasshoppers here is blue, but we do have red ones too.

Guy

[Mikhail]

Gary, I can't see the victim well enough to hazard a guess.

Misha

[geniculata]

well it was a long shot!

don't help that its part dismembered
good set of pics though!

cheers gary.