First mantis hunt in Texas Summer 2010
I have been procrastinating on mantis hunting due to the great amount of time I have been spending on my two new hobbies i.e.
carnivorous plants and carnivorous katydids, besides thousand of mantis I am currently keeping. This year I also have couple of
overseas friend visiting so that makes this Summer ‘extra’ busy.
Last weekend I finally able to drag my over-weight body out to go looking for mantis before the Summer is over. It is always fun looking
for mantis except for the threat of getting sun burn, being bitten by one of the venomous snakes, getting stung or chased by the sudden
swarm of bees, being sucked dry by the ever annoying mosquitoes…. (now am I complaining!!??) Well after about an hour of drive to
New Caney (a town North of Houston) it was about 10 am, the weather was getting hotter and reaching 85F, I started to check along
the edge of the field and realized that there hasn’t been any sign of being mowed which is great. It doesn’t take me long before I
spotted an adult Brunneria borealis even before using my butterfly net.
I spent the next 10 minutes grazing through the field and spotted another B. borealis trying to move out of my sight. After that I started to
sweep the tall grasses for the next hour and netted another 4 B. borealis in about an hour, but surprisingly I also netted a Thesprotia
graminis adult female.
The sun is getting hot by then so I went for lunch (Love the Olees chopped BBQ beef burger for 99 cents! each) for a break. It is usually
difficult to come back and have intensive search on the field right after lunch. So I went for the easy prey which is the large grasshopper
on the field which makes good food for my carnivorous katydid. Plenty of them were caught mated on the tree.
After about a dozen of those easy catch I went back to look for Stagmomantis Carolina which is usually found on shrub or small tree
(instead of grasses). After about an hour of search I could only find an adult male S. carolina but couldn’t spot a single nymph or adult
female. But there is definitely some adult females there since I also collected a fresh egg case of S. carolina.
It was getting to mid 90 temperature by then and it is just getting unbearable so I decided to stop at around 2 PM. On my way back to
my car I spotted 2 adult male S. carolina way up there on the sign board of the shop next to the field. It was way too high for me to catch
but appear to me those adult males were waiting for the night as the light on the sign board would attract insects which is food for the
mantis!
As soon as I get hope, the lone S. carolina male didn’t take a long time before taking down a fly. The Neobarrettia spinosa female also
pounced on the grasshopper right away.
Well that concludes my first mantis hunt here, I am sure there will be more in the future before the cold weather sets in. I would
certainly like to go back there at night to look for those adult males species.
Note: All the pictures from the collected mantis were taken at home.
