Mantises

Few months back I saw some red things - they were praying mantises it seemed. They would sit in curled up position and move only once light conditions are poor enough which meant for long I couldnt manage any shot. but still, watching them when they walked was very enjoyable - body length increasing by few folds and each step preceded by action that looked like he was punching air and preempting any danger. There were just too many of them around but all I could get was few average shots on couple of occasions as below. Second individual was kind enough to walk while light was still good.

Then with winter, insects were not seen as much and so above red or any other mantises. and after the winter break, first one that I managed to notice was this below individual. He sat on this flowers for days and days and days.. I was really surprised how long that flower stayed there!
In the background, there is a crab spider - you can see if you make great attempt at seeing it and then just believe me when I say its there. Mantis was standing with its back to the crab spider and only recently had noticed that someone else was sharing the flower. Here, Mantis is interrupting his attempt to ask crab spider what's his business here to pose for me.

Then one day, I notice that an ant on the yellow flower was actually a tiny mantis! I was very excited to finally find an ant mimicking mantis. so I took some shots.

I kept visiting that flowers for next few days and while I didn't notice any change in that Mantis (nor I was expecting any change), when I started uploading shots for this post, notice that it had changed, probably grew bigger too. Wikipedia told me that my ant mimicking mantis was actually a mantis nymph that was mimicking ant only while it was small. 

yes, I felt very uneducated, but seriously, for someone who really is as uneducated like me, it was probably ok to misjudge. See the next image how it looked when you looked at flower with your eyes, not macro lens.

Don't know what these are called, but probably they would grow to become something like below ones. I had encountered them last summer/monsoon.

I am still new to insect world and sure there are many strange ones around, but in what I have seen so far, I find mantises one of the more interesting looking. Specifically, how their bodies are folded and how they predictably stay at same place for days together. Few others below. I had shared them at previously but listing them out again to make this post as a complete collections of all Mantises I have found so far.

With Nature, if you make a generic statement, next thing you find is, retracting yourself. Happens with me at least. Below types were actually hyperactive. let alone finding them at one place for days, it was almost impossible to judge where you should try to focus as it ran with fantastic speed.

and not too many folds here. Unless, its something else altogether. This was very big. I have a full shot too but preferred this as other has white/yellow wall in background.

This post turns out mostly a photo listing one and I think another of same kind may follow soon. It probably is appearing unbalanced, but I guess amount of text in previous post was enough to counter at least ten photo-only posts :-)