Mantis Hunting in Western Washington

[Coneja]

Hello, everyone... with a stretch of warm weather here, I've been thinking a lot about trying to find wild mantids. After reading/researching about the subject on this site, I've learned what kinds of areas to look in: overgrown, meadow-y, someplace with lots of feeder insects. Seems people have been finding lots of ooths lately (and Digger's ooths fall from the sky ); are these from last year? At this point in the season, are any wild mantids pretty small still? (Seems a lot of the big mantis collections go on in October.) Has anyone else had success mantis hunting/collecting in Western Washington? I've only ever seen a few mantids in this state and that's been in Eastern Washington, but I just got into this hobby in January so haven't been actively looking before that.

I'm obviously new to this, so any advice/tips are greatly welcome!

 

[Meadow98684]

I believe they would mostly be nymphs at this point sort of like grasshoppers are really little right now. And I've been moderately successful in Washington, but I haven't been able to find any wild ones in years.

 

[frogparty]

I lived almost my whole life in WA and never saw a mantis in western Wa. Plenty east of the mountains

 

[Coneja]

Hmm... Sounds like I need to roadtrip to the East Side this summer! I just went out for over an hour, walking and looking in tall grass and some shrubs. Only found a few spiders and a cool caterpillar, not that I expected to really find anything on my first search, but you never know! Then towards the end I realized if they were really small nymphs I wouldn't be able to keep them anyway at this time, since I only have bluebottles stocked right now...

 

[frogparty]

Lake Chelan area has lots

 

[Coneja]

Good to know, thanks. Friends of the family used to have a rustic cabin in the hills outside of Omak, which is where I saw my first mantis. I think we took pictures but this was years ago... It was a brown adult, but didn't seem as big as a Chinese... perhaps it was a European mantis. The second one I found was at a gas station on one of the trips home, and those are the only two I've ever stumbled across in Washington.