Category: Miller Woods Trail

Who Is The Prey Here?

Posted on by MC2 · 1 Comment

I spend a lot of time watching and photographing insects engaged in a variety of activities, usually pollenating flowers. Spend enough time out on the trails, observing and taking photographs, and you start to notice the ambush predators. The ones that sit motionless, hidden in the blossoms, their camouflage blending almost perfectly with their surroundings. The Praying Mantis is one such predator, seamlessly blending in with the numerous branches and stems, they wait for something to come close enough to grasp with their powerful forelimbs.

I came across this scene out on the Miller Woods trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park. I must have just missed the moment when the Mantis caught the Moth which was still struggling.

By the time I got my camera setup and started taking photographs it had already taken its first bite.
As I watched and photographed, the Mantis took a couple more bites out of the Moth which was barely struggling at this point.
In it goes in for another bite.
This is the moment when it spotted me!
From this moment on the Mantis locked eyes with me and for the next 5 minutes or so it followed my every move.
Even as I moved around, repositioning my camera and taking photos from different angles and distances, its eyes never left mine.
For one brief moment it looked back down at its prey…
… then it looked back at me. I could easily imagine that the Mantis was contemplating which would make for the more satisfying meal, the Moth in its grip or Me.
In the end the Mantis decided to stick with the Moth and moved off deeper into the foliage in order to eat in peace.

Now of course the Mantis was likely not considering killing and eating me. But they are predators, and through their eyes pretty much everything is either prey or a threat. What really made an impression on me was the degree of visual acuity which the Mantis showed. Its eyes were absolutely locked in on me, tracking my every movement no matter how slight. It was intensely focused on me, and only me.

I’ve been down on the ground at eye level with snakes, just a couple feet away taking similar photographs as they watch me. Sometimes they appear to be looking into your eyes too, but they are so motionless that it feels more like they think you won’t see them as long as they don’t move. The moment you make any movement at all, off they go. The stare of the Mantis however, that was a bit creepy. Almost like it really was trying to decide if I was prey, or not!

Lush!

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Last year we had a very dry spring, and that had a noticeable impact on the park. Water levels were quite low. This year, wow. It has beed a very rainy spring. Water levels are as high as I’ve seen them across the park. It is a wonderful thing to see all the Pannes which were were dry last year, full of water this year. The impact on the spring growth has been phenomenal. The whole park is exploding with wild flowers, lush and vibrant greens are everywhere. The photographs in this post were are taken on Mother’s Day on the Miller Woods trail in the IDNP.


If you happen to live anywhere near the Indiana Dunes I highly recommend that you visit the park sometime soon. You won’t be dissapointed.

(Click on any image to view it full size)

It was a beautiful day to be out on the trail. Temperatures in the upper 70’s, lots of sun, not too much wind. The Lupine pretty much stole the show, as they tend to do each year at this time. They grow in dense clumps which amplifies the impact of their intense purple/blue flowers. The other striking feature of the trail was how intense and vibrant the greens were. Brilliant yellow-greens and rich blue-greens.
Of course I collected plenty of my more typical close up photographs of plants and insects. Not surprisingly the bees were out in abundance, and were heavily laden with pollen. And where you have pollenators, you have predators hunting them, like jumping spiders.
This was one of the rare times when I took more landscape photographs than closeups of plants and insects. Partly because my prior two hikes had resulted in plenty of closeups of Lupine. But to be honest I was totally captivated by the beauty of the landscape, so I just kept trying and trying to capture the impact of it all.