Crouching mantid, leaping spider

The garden is sprouting into action and the insects are definitely on the increase. As you can see from the picture below, the Hydrangea bushes have come back with healthy green leaves but I have already spied a few leaf or plant hoppers so time will tell how much they damage the plant.

Fresh green spring growth over the two Hydrangea bushes.

After saying my mantids are back, this week has been worrying as I hadn't seen any except this one below which was the victim of one of the Jumping spiders which have moved back into the Hydrangea hunting ground!

I also witnessed this Jumping spider putting on a great display in front of a smaller one until it had lured it close enough to capture. It was amazing.

Here is an animated gif I made to show how they jump from leaf to leaf:

Autoawesome gif of Jumping Spider

Jumping spider with a small jumping spider for its meal.

The little hunter became the hunted when this jumping spider caught it for its lunch!

This sight really saddened me and I kept searching for its little siblings in vain all week. I had started to believe that all three had suffered a similar fate when yesterday I was telling my son of the situation as we walked past and there was a little mantid in plain sight!

I investigated further with camera in hand and found about eight more tiny mantid nymphs on the bushes and the Cumquat tree beside them.

They really are still very tiny but clearly many of them are able to avoid capture and also catch their own meal which is a challenging job for one so small.

Baby mantid looking at me.

I have also found three adult Spined Citrus bugs now and some of their eggs; three batches in fact! If they are all successful, my citrus trees could be in trouble however I am willing to leave them in order to see what happens. I'd like to see the nymphs when they are little which I didn't see last year and I remember that last year many of the eggs were not succesful anyway. There is a parasitic wasp that lays in them and I suspect that is what happened.

Spined Citrus bug eggs on cumquat.

Spined Citrus bug eggs on leaf.

Last year I found some Katydid nymphs on the Cumquat tree but this year, like with the Citrus bugs, I have found an adult one at the very start of the season so I suspect there will be offspring from this one too.

Katydid adult enjoying a Cumquat flower.

Finally, a little brownish plant or leaf hopper I found which was new to me as well. Last season's were all those bluish green ones.

Small brownish leaf/plant hopper on Hydrangea leaf. I love the markings on this one!

Bug Season Returns!

Winter is over and spring has arrived and so have the insects, spiders and bugs that were in diapause or hibernation and the new bugs that have just emerged into their next stage of life.
I really don't know where a lot of the bugs hide but it is not uncommon to find moths and beetles in garages for shelter and ladybird beetles all congregating in crevices of outdoor furniture or buildings where they presumably just slow down their systems until the conditions improve.

To catch you up on what happened to the original microcosm, that is the Hydrangea bushes and Cumquat tree; below is a photo of the Hydranga bushes that I pruned to remove damaged leaves but then new growth appeared which now covers the bushes in a healthy lush covering.

Pruned Hydrangea bushes with some new growth appearing.

The cumquat tree did not change much except some cumquats were picked and some fell. The damage done by the citrus bugs was not extensive despite the fact that I found at least three or four on the tree altogether. 

However, I dug out a lot of the fishbone fern you can see in the background because it is very invasive and  uses the water of the other plants because it has an extensive fibrous root system. I also planted a native hibiscus nearby which is not a Hibiscus at all but has flowers of a similar shape to Hibiscus. 

Another thing worth mentioning is the slow decline of the casemoth numbers in the back garden. If you read my earlier post, Dainty Flyers and Curious Nomads then you will be interested in what happened to the caterpillars with their own mobile homes. 
For a good way into the colder weather they seemed to remain on the plants around the garden where I'd seen them before but I knew that some insectivorous birds preyed on these as I'd seen Currawongs doing just that on a tree next door which was obviously a good place for them also.

Currawongs feeding on case moth caterpillars on Pencil Pine Tree.

I have also seen this Butcher Bird visiting my back garden so now when I noticed that the Case moths seem to have almost all gone, I wonder if that is why he came to visit. 

Butcher Bird sitting on branch - look at its sharp hooked beak. 

But, isn't this post about the bugs returning? 

Yes, of course! I saved the best to last!

Now that you have a very brief summary of what happened over winter, I will tell you what sparked my blog back to life! 

Slowly I have been seeing more insects in the garden; butterflies, bees, flies, lots of spiders and so forth but the warm days have been interrupted by colder, very windy days and some rain so it has not been ideal weather to be a flying bug or to be a bug photographer. 

Saltie or Jumping Spider with other spider for lunch!

Hoverfly on leaf

However, today was a glorious spring day; the sun shone, there was only a slight breeze every now and then and it seemed like spring was really here at last. 

I was looking in a spot where I often see some salticidae or jumping spiders near one of my orange trees and glanced at the mantid ootheca (egg case) on the fence behind it. I took a closer look and realised it was open with all the tiny little holes where the mantid nymphs emerged so I looked closely for a little mantid nearby but  no luck. 

I moved over to the original Mantid Microcosm and looked once again as I do often among the leaves of the Hydrangeas. Eureka! A tiny brown mantid nymph; definitely only in its first instar/stage of life. Then I saw another and circled around the bushes to the Cumquat where another quickly ducked under the fruit it was on, hoping I would did not see it. 

I'm really happy that my mantids have succeeded in producing another generation and I'm sure I'll find more as time goes by like I did last time. 

So, here  are the photos from today!

Praying Mantid Ootheca

Tiny Mantid Nymph found today!