Herald Snake Hunt

I never leave home without a macro lens. There always seems something to photograph, even when back at camp after game drives or during rainy weather when most photographers pack away their gear. One’s back garden always seems to provide some incredible sightings and in fact some of my favourite images have been taken right in my back yard.



I recently stumbled upon this fantastic scene at home. A fairly large Herald snake had gotten hold of a large Red Toad, probably hunting it from within the hollow log pictures above. Once immobilized the snake could not get the toad back into the tree hole and was left to consume it from a somewhat precarious (to say the least!) position.
 

Painstakingly slow the snake managed to consume the prey until the very last bit.



 Whether the snake would eventually make a meal of its quarry was anyone's guess which meant that I had to stay with the snake quite a while to determine and photograph the unfolding events. These things take a while though and I was very fortunate that I had time on my hands that day. Scenes like this certainly do not come around too often and it was indeed a pleasure to witness such drama unfold almost from start to end.

Praying Mantis Eating Spider

Some birds are supposed to eat spiders and spiders eat insects, right? Well seems like they don’t always follow the rules. After witnessing a very unique scenario almost a year ago of a spider eating a bird I thought it was quite interesting yesterday to witness another instance of this spider in an example of predation. Unfortunately this time the poor arachnid was the one being scoffed by a very ambitious Praying Mantis. So there you, go another example albeit on a small scale, of the complete opportunism of predators.