An Auspicious Day

This morning there was the usual overcast sky for the full moon.  However there was a small gap above the mountains. I kept a close watch for an hour or so and was rewarded with this shot. A moment after it cleared the upper cloud it began to melt into the barely visible grey layer beyond the red clouds. I quickly moved to  avoid the tree, but the moon had become a vague pale shape. Then all at once the moon and the sun disappeared and everything turned grey.  Other moonset shots.

Today two of the praying mantis females laid their eggs. I didn’t notice until late afternoon when I filled a can from the water tank tap. The tap is high and I have a bit of hose attached to it to make filling easier. When I jerked the hose from the can I inadvertently dislodged a mantis and her egg case. Naturally I went to get my camera. She stayed with her finished ootheca for several minutes before climbing up the foam clad water pipe. She climbed up about three metres and then took off, flying into some long grass. I picked her up to have a close look at her. I wanted to know her, since I accept the responsibility of caring for her eggs for the next 7 or 8 months. Then I put her on a leaf and looked at the other one.

The second mantis was the female from the apple tree, the eater of wasps and subject of my 7th Blipday shot.. Her damaged eye made her easy to recognise. She calmly finished off building her ootheca and began climbing the other foam clad pipe. As I watched she came to a scrappy spiderweb. She made a sudden grab at a small fly that was caught up in it, but it must have been dead as she threw it aside. Then she tried to climb the web as though it was a ladder, and soon become tangled. I picked her up and cleaned the web off her and put her  back higher up. She went on climbing. I was distracted by the first mantis for a while and missed the apple tree mantis taking off. I’ll miss her. I have photographed her almost daily for the last couple of weeks.

The first of the two extras is a collage of the first mantis. Her ootheca was hanging upside down and I have taken it for safe keeping. The other is of the apple tree mantis still working on her ootheca.