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This little mantis afforded me a perfect opportunity to examine it in detail and take ventral images...it was reclining backward in an almost horizontal position, the head continually moving and scanning for prey. (It was not exhibiting a defensive posture).

5 cm length

This woodpecker was hopping around a ponderosa pine next to the Centennial Trail. Unfortunately I only had a small point-and-shoot camera with me so I could not get a nice photo since the woodpecker was a bit a ways away.

The "helmet" that is upright in the head, just lifts it into defensiveness or alarm. It keeps down when she is quiet.

http://lagomera1.blogspot.com.es/2013/09/praying-insects-on-la-gomera.html

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/44792219/0

Check this out. Last year we saw a hummer get caught and eaten by a large mantis. The mantis was sitting on one of the feeders. I never heard of that happening before. We’ve been feeding hummers and have had dense populations of hummers at our feeders for 25 years now, and we had never seen this before last year. We have seen several instances of large female black-and-yellow garden spiders catching and eating hummers, but lots of mantises are around and so far as we've seen, they have never caught a hummer until last year.

Today a mantis caught a hummer and is eating it right now. The mantis with its prey is sitting on the persimmon bush/tree that is right by the feeders.

It looks like it could be the same mantis, but I googled mantis longevity and apparently a year is the maximum lifespan, so this has got to be a new mantis. It is possible, maybe even likely that this is the offspring of the huge female mantis that caught the bird last year, as she was the only big mantis in the area we ever saw. Maybe mantis catch hummers all the time, but we just don’t see them do it, and I think it is a pretty rare behavior. This one couldn’t have learned the behavior from a mother she never saw. Is there an inheritable bird-eating trait in that particular lineage? I guess it's a simpler hypothesis that it's a trait for quicker growth or larger than average size, and that just allows them to include hummers on the menu by late summer.