Determination



 



A pale predator waiting for the last late visitors to the sunflower. There in the morning before I left for work, there when I returned home at five. Patience is an eight-legged virtue.

 

 

Angry Insects

The DH spotted this on his way to get the paper. This formation went for six feet. Zillions of ants look to be having a gigantic, panicky fire drill, or some sort of evacuation procedure. "Everybody out! Mill around!!" But more likely it was something like a big pesticide application driving them out from underground.


This little guy has HAD it with me chasing him all over the table with the macro on, and he's turned to fight, belligerently putting up his two wee front legs like a boxer. Cracked me up.

Arachnophiles Only Read On

Here now is the late (very late indeed) late-summer roundup of Spiders In The Backyard, 2009 Edition. We will be starting with egg cases, but later there will be big hairy spiders, so you are aware. This summer we had a number of Cribellate Orb Weavers (Uloborus) on this one low evergreen shrub. They build a horizontal orb web, and sit around all stretched out with their legs before and behind them in a line. Odd. Here's a shot of what the egg cases look like. Naturally, I missed the emergence. Very hard to catch these things.

Here's the Uloborus stretched out, as is its wont, in the center of the web.

Here she is, stretched out (again) to the southwest with one egg case behind her:

So that was something new and different. There were plenty of familiar octopeds, too.

Here, it was a cool day, and this guy was sleeping under a buddleia leaf just off his web.

Look at the design on this spider's abdomen. It reminds me of a woven tapestry or rug:

Click to enlarge and check out the child-like flower image on this spider's abdomen, a brown flower with two leaves on a cream background:

( I don't know what's for lunch, but it looks like there's plenty of it... )

And last but not you-know-what, here's a belly-view of a late-summer badass, the kind that build giant webs across frequently-traveled paths...

It's Giant Spider Season

Late summer brings out webworld's big boys! Thanks to Ken for the scale-providing half dollar.

Key West Final (People and Other Critters Edition)

The streets were lively at night; this man had music playing as he cruised the main drag:

Oh, Peter, you should have gotten a teaching license to fall back on...

Michael and Alex with a stormtrooper:

We also saw some pretty strange sights during the day.

This is a conch eye:

and this was the spider that changed my mind about walking down that particular "nature trail;"

it's a spiny-backed orbweaver:

Grey Doily Of Death

From a lizard's perspective, it's quite a pretty tent, isn't it?

From here it's a ragged lace handkerchief thrown on the shrub.

From here it looks like an invitating oasis, a miniature landscape of frozen delights, with a cave you should probably not approach, if you know what's good for you.

A Cluster of Spiders

These webs, these infernal webs, they're everywhere I go, thrown up in a quarter-hour or less. Tell me again how beneficial my arachnoid friends are, I need to hear it...
Here's one of my half-dozen common brown garden spiders, this time hiding under a leaf of the butterfly bush. Why? I don't know. All I know is, he's the size of a U.S. nickel and if he hides like this he'll wind up in my hair.

Lest this pretty green thing appear too dainty, its look is accented with spiky leg hairs.

Very scary.

All kinds of spiders are living in the depths of the tomato-plant patch, making it impossible to harvest the tomatoes in the middle. Low light also makes it impossible to photograph the spiders. Lose-lose.

And here, a funnel-web builder set up shop just a few inches from the sidewalk, weaving his luminous carpet on top of the junipers and then:

Waiting. ....................>

Eight Arms To Hold On

Finally, the videos you've all (not really) been waiting for: the Amazingly Intrepid Spider (With Soundtrack!) and the Same Fearless Spider On A Different Day. This little guy, a common garden variety arachnid much like the one pictured above, was living for several weeks in Ken's car's sideview mirror. Having built a web overnight, he (she?) would come out when the car started moving each morning, battle the wind for possession of the silky strands, and, having gathered or gobbled them all up, would retreat inside the shelter of the mirror's overhang for the rest of the ride to the parking garage in Jamaica, where he (or she) did who-knows-what all day while we were at work. Then, having traveled back home with us, he (or she) would spend the evening building another web. This went on three or four times we could see. Now, there's been no sign of the Tenacious One for many days, but for what it's worth, his (her?) indomitable spirit is captured in these movies.

Again With The Little Critters!

It feels like the lightning bugs showed up early this year. Not that I'm complaining! They're one of the few bugs I don't mind approaching. They're very patient subjects when seated, as above, but a little harder to capture when aloft and aglow, as below.
Although our backyard wildlife is humble in its variety and lacks exoticism, I am, apparently, easy to fascinate.

Our little lizard colony continues to thrive; can you see that one below, looks like he's laughing at me? I had to hide behind the foliage to take this. Look how cute he is with his mouth open! Actually, he was in the process of swallowing a bug.

And look at this guy, below, why haven't I ever seen one before? Have I just been unobservant all these years?
Leucauge venusta

This beautiful glittery-gold-and-iridescent-green-bodied spider is keeping an immaculate horizontal orb web behind my garage, completely immobilizing my agriculture-recycling bin for the last four days now, but he's so interesting I'm letting him be. How do I know the fancy Latin name for this arachnid? Once again, I found my answer on BugGuide, an active and informed "online community of naturalists." This time, instead of posting a photo of my mystery caterpillar as I did before and waiting for a reply, I used the search box on the main page to bring up photos with the keywords 'green spider', and found a dead match in the thumbnails on the first page of results.