A nice garden visitor

Our garden is often visited by a variety of insects. This is important as they pollinate the plants. The most common visitors are bees and wasps. But there are also pests that eat the plants. Well, yesterday we had an unexpected visitor – a European mantis, aka Preying mantis/Praying mantis.

We have these large insects almost annually, and they’re always welcome. Mantises (European and Chinese) are both introduced species that feed on other insects. Most people are surprised they these large insects are capable of flying.

While the European mantis is large the Chinese mantis is huge.

Here’s a gravid female Chinese mantis showing it’s wings in a threatening posture. I had caught it and was holding it on some paper.

That’s all for today, more later.