Jul 22, 2011: Background: in this season I decided to make an insectary in our garden house. Reasons were (1) I had an unneeded bird cage, (2) I wanted to observe a spider in it (so that the spider would live there comfortably, without making webs in silly places and after that running away, offended by inevitable destruction of the web). Thus, I wrapped the cage in a net, put some soil to the floor and sowed some grass into it. And then I put there insects and spiders. Some of them got there for interest, some — for neutralization. The grasshoppers were in the 2^nd group. They are too big to be killed light-heartedly and at the same time they make too big damage to our plants to be released into the garden light-heartedly.

Now, the main story. After some time I mentioned that almost all insects, except grasshoppers, disappear from the insectary. Spider went off, too. Ok, maybe smaller ones find way out through holes… I thought so until I saw the grasshopper eating a fly. Wow. Moreover, it looked like eating flies was not something completely new to her. Here, she holds the fly accurately by her front legs and eats it with her strong jaws. And, while eating, she uses other 4 legs to run away from the camera, moving upside down along the insectary top.

The story continued…

species Tettigonia cantans