spiders
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Spider
This 2″-long orb-weaver has been hanging out here since August. The web, quite tattered, is as high and wide as half the window. The animal is remarkably inactive, positioned in the center of web for most of the day, although she will quickly retreat into a nook in the storm-window frame when feeling shy. The…
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Insects
Harmonia axyridis, the Multi-colored Asian Lady Beetle, is known in the UK as the Harlequin Lady Beetle. “Harlequin” is a better common name than MALB, which is a mouthful and has a whiff of racial baggage to it, particularly when added to invasive. This one was one of two spotted in Denmark, the only lady…
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Step into my funnel
Appropriation of the unnatural: this fence post has been taken over by what I think is a sheet-web building grass spider of the genus Agelenopsis. Note the funnel descending into the post. That’s where she hangs out. I picked up a leaf and gently tapped the other end of the webbing, which brought her out…
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Webs
A complex of webs connected to a seven-foot-long horizontal piece of spidersilk. Remarkable. A view from the side of the complex, showing another web, making for one large and three satellite webs.The only spider in evidence was sucking on dinner.
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Leggy
Daddy-, or Granddaddy-longlegs… but wait a minute. There are only six legs here. The Opiliones order of harvestman are related to spiders and have eight legs. What’s going on? It looks like the first joint to the right of the face is missing a limb, so presumably is the other side. Missing that joint, too,…
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TX Insects
Walking Stick on Peter’s bins. Texas has at least 16 species. Leaf-cutter ant (Atta texana) highway. The ants are returning to their sprawling underground colonies with leaf fragments, which, farmer-like, they feed to the fungus they actually eat.Thornbush Dasher (Micrathyria hagenii).Band-winged Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax umbrata).Antlion. This is the adult stage.We saw many antlion traps, where buried…
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Tarantula!
I think this is a male Arizona Desert Tarantula (Aphonopelma chalcodes), also known as Arizona Blond Tarantula because of the female’s coloring. Our intrepid, and hawk-eyed, guide Jake swerved the van out of the way and then backed up to coax this spider onto his hand. And then, up his wrist.The males wander over a…
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Spider
We interrupt this progression of posts on the faraway sublime to bring you a bit of sublime closer at home. I was breaking down a head of broccoli and had gotten to the best part, the stem, which unfortunately was hollowed out by rot, when this one scootled across the chopping block for the cover…
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Variations on Legs
Fiddler crabs in the tiny patch of ever-so-green right now salt marsh at Pier One. On the jumbly rocks next to it, a number of these spiders:I have returned from a two week trip abroad. I have a new computer. I am ready to blog again.A young New World Robin, SO different from the Old…
Backyard and Beyond 