Praying mantis egg cluster

Last August, I wrote about a trek I made to try to find a local wetland called the Bell Cedar Swamp, and while I didn't manage to locate it that day—I found it later on and will be reporting on it in later posts—I discovered other things of extreme interest. In a field I walked through, I noticed several Praying Mantises (see brucefellman.zenfolio.com/blog/2013/8/hidden-in-plain-sight) and photographed them. The adult insects, of course, are not around anymore, but, on a trek through that same field in search of that same swamp, I found evidence they'd been present, evidence they'd been successful, even if the male mantises paid for carrying on species with their lives. Actually, female mantises only occasionally eat their mates following copulation. I don't have precise figures, but it may be no more than a third of the time in the wild, so a male mantis doesn't have to become dinner to become a dad. Whatever the aftermath of this particular coupling, the female, duly inseminated, eventually crafted this protective case to keep her eggs, perhaps as many as several hundred of them, safe for the winter. The adults then succumbed to the cold. The kids, miniature versions of their parents, will hatch and sally forth in search of prey as soon as the weather turns genuinely warm. Those that have the good luck and wherewithal to prosper will be back in this field to keep the species going.