northeast-flora-and-fauna

I've got another Tenodera picture for you. As a reminder, Tenodera is the genus that contains 2 related and similar species of praying mantis, the Chinese Mantis and the Narrow-winged (aka Japanese) Mantis . I'll use the Tenodera name just because I can't tell what the species is. Although I showed you another Tenodera just over a week ago, I wanted to show another today because: They're big, photogenic insects. This one is eating lunch. So what's for lunch? It's hard to say. My first thought, which could be accurate, that this is a bumble bee . The only reason I'm waffling on that is that usually bumble bees have fairly prominent antennae, and I don't see that in this picture. Of course they could have been broken off or even eaten by the mantis, but some of the hover flies are bee mimics so I wouldn't rule them out either. Note that the mantis has actually torn its meal in 2; presumably this is the best way to eat these insects. (Certainly the ...

This is probably a Chinese Mantis , although my understanding is that a Narrow-winged Mantis (aka Japanese Mantis) is an awfully similar mantis that's also in the area. I don't normally handle the bugs I photograph, so I can't look for an orange spot field mark between the front legs. I've read that the Chinese Mantis has a yellow spot instead; I don't know what you do if the spot is yellowish orange. With views like this one, I've been IDing them at the genus level ( Tenodera ) on iNaturalist since both (related) species are in that genus. (There are around 16 species in the genus, though I think the Chinese and Narrow-winged Mantises are probably the only 2 that are a good candidate for this mantis.) Here's another article to help ID these guys. September 5, 2022 in Bridgewater Photo 238965050, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)