Thursday, November 12, 2009

Bark Sprouts Legs

Yesterday I went to go scrape the white paint band off of an old RCW cavity tree when a piece of unpainted bark got up and walked out of the path of my bark knife. Yeah, I was surprised, too. Do you see it?


Here's a better look:


It turns out this piece of legged bark has a name: the Grizzled Mantis (Gonatista grisea). It kept skittering in a quick crab-walk around the trunk as I chased it in circles with my camera. I did manage a few more pictures:


In retrospect, I should've cornered it and harassed it more. The result is this spectacular display.

I hadn't realized there were such crazy-looking mantids in the US. I'll have to dig out and share some pictures of even crazier tropical mantis species that I used to keep.

5 comments:

  1. That must have been startling!

    I like the display picture you linked to. The mantis looks like he's rocking out to some great music.

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  2. Wow, great find!

    In the top photo, I think I also see a moth about a third of the way down.

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  3. Perfectly camouflaged. Didn't see it at all at first.

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  4. That is pretty crazy. I agree, you should've harassed it more. Could've been quite the show hahah.

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  5. How did you spot it? http://d-wing.blogspot.com/

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