Oddities

[vaneramos]

Some weird things turned up at our cottage this weekend. First of all, marian_w and Brenna spotted two catfish beside our dock, herding what appeared to be a school of little black tadpoles. We had never seen catfish in Lake Fletcher, let alone two of them engaged in this weird behaviour. I finally waded in and got close enough to bend down and discern that the tadpoles were in fact catfish fry, shaped exactly like tadpoles but with distinctive tiny whiskers. Apparently they look after their young. You learn something every day.

Saturday morning I spotted a weird mantis on a waterlily. When I waded over to photograph it, the thing started waving its legs as if to climb on me, so I figured it was marooned. When I tried to rescue it with a stick, the thing slipped into the water. Every time I picked it up, off it would slip again. Finally it began paddling away from me, looking very much like an Olympic rower from another planet.

I saw one of these on the dock two years ago. It appears to be Thesprotia graminis, though all the sources I can find list the species as being found only in the Southern States and Mexico. The Canadian Encyclopedia Historica says only three mantis species are recorded in Canada, and T. graminis isn't one of them. [Edit: I've had the darnedest time identifying these things. First time I saw it, I thought it was a stick insect. Thanks to eloquentwthrage for pointing out it isn't a mantid at all, but a water scorpion, probably Ranatra fusca.]

Dragonflies and damselflies mating? It's an everyday occurrence over the waters of our bay, but a pair has never allowed me to approach this close.

Weird and sad was a female black duck with a broken wing, which showed up by our dock early this afternoon. When we threw pieces of bread, she accepted them. Then I got the idea of carting her back to Guelph; there's a wild bird clinic at the university. So we went after her with towels, me in the canoe, Marian and Brenna scrambling through shrubs along the shore. At one point we had her closely cornered, but she evaded us for about half an hour. Finally we grew tired and gave up.

Comments

[estherandmia.livejournal.com]

i love those encounters with animals. I met many mantis. She seem to show up in my life when i lived in Canada. They hold a strange energy for me.
the story of the fish is so cute.....
thanks for sharing!

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

Those are water scorpions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scorpion). And you're lucky you didn't get bit. I was bitten by one of those as a kid and it hurts like heck.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Turns out this particular critter was not a mantis but a water scorpion! You're lucky to have seen mantises. In my entire life in Ontario, I've only seen two or three.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Oooh, thanks! I've had the hardest time with this critter. First time I saw it two years ago, I mistook it for a stick insect.

[eloquentwthrage.livejournal.com]

I remember that, but this time I looked it up because I knew it wasn't a mantid.