Life and Death in the Meadow (not for the squeamish)

It is obvious that meadows (and their prairie relatives) are full of life. Flowers, grasses, butterflies, and birds are everywhere.

This little cutie is a silver-spotted skipper.

And we musn't forget the bees, who love meadows.

This particular spot near Wiregrass Lake was hosting dozens of swallows, swooping and twittering the whole time I was there,

and the grasses near the Meadowhawk Shelter were indeed hosting meadowhawks, this one a male ruby.

But all that life comes at the expense of other life. Dragonflies this year are so numerous that they show up on National Weather Service radar, and, gorgeous as they are, dragonflies are consummate predators. A few yards away in the same meadow, this handsome fellow was having an insect snack.

The unfortunate prey vanished in only a few seconds.

The same meadow plants that attract pollinators also attract pollinator predators. Meandering along, I saw what at first seemed to be a bumblebee spending an unaccountably long time perched on a bare stick but proved to be a bumblebee captured by a praying mantis.

Mantis carnivory is not pretty.

Even those lovely, swooping swallows were hunting as they made their loops over the meadow, and the butterflies nectaring on the blossoms were also looking for places to lay eggs, where their caterpillars could chew holes in the leaves of their chosen hosts-

-if, that is, they manage not to become food for the baby birds dependent on caterpillars for their first diet.

Nature can be beautiful, but she is not particularly kind to individuals.