5-6 weeks ago I spotted an ootheca in the woods and brought it closer to the flower beds.

wild ootheca

Yesterday I was watering and noticed some tiny and very skittish mantids on some of the plants:

hatched mantis on stake
hatched mantis on dahlia
hatched mantis on dahlia
hatched mantis on dahlia

Sure enough, the ootheca shows signs of having hatched. What’s most surprising is how far they’ve already traveled, maybe 40+ feet from where I had it positioned.

hatched ootheca
mantis and ootheca positions

Here’s a relatively large jumping spider I noticed this week. This guy was also very skittish and hard to get a good photo of:

jumping spider on post

I’ve got a couple toads roaming the beds. There was a small one that somehow found its own way through the fence to get there, and a larger one that I moved in from the yard. The solar lights seem to attract them at night, or perhaps they just use them as a source of bugs:

toad in flower bed
small toad at night
small toad at night
toad at night

Out in the woods I also noticed a gray treefrog on a little stump:

gray treefrog on stump

And I recently spotted the first box turtle I can recall seeing on the property in the 9+ years I’ve been here:

box turtle