Mary found this lovely lady hiding in the shrubbery — it’s the shamrock orbweaver, Araneus trifolium, and it was sheltered inside a folded leaf stitched together with silk.
In case you were wondering how big it is…
Thumbnail sized.
I was feeling a bit robust this morning, and managed to hobble all the way out to the backyard, where I could explore the fauna thriving there. Mary was hovering at my elbow to make sure I didn’t topple over, but I did OK — another week or two, and I might be going on real walks (as long as I don’t do anything stupid.) Things I saw that made me happy:
We spotted two monarch butterflies flitting over the garden. No photos, though, they didn’t land and pose for me.
The place is hopping with grasshoppers, which, while not normally associated with good gardens, is fine with me — the purpose of the garden is making spider food, not tomatoes. Mary may disagree with me.
Oh, and it was so bright. I’m not used to that anymore.
We also had lots of interesting pollinators, like this two-spotted longhorn bee.
Of course, the queen of the garden, the devourer of grasshoppers, the true monarch, was Argiope trifasciata.
It’s a fine crop, and congratulations to Mary on her superlative gardening skills. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make it to the front yard to see what wonders flourish there.
Mary has planted lots of milkweed in our yard, and it’s paying off. We keep finding more caterpillars, and we’ve seen as many as a half-dozen butterflies at once fluttering over the tasty field of monarch food growing here.
It’s nothing compared to the swarms we’d see 20-25 years ago, but we’re doing our part to cultivate more.
We know we have a lot of bats living above our garage — it’s non-trivial to check, though. There’s an access panel in the garage ceiling and you need to use a ladder to climb up there. But I imagine it might look a little like this if you climbed up and rummaged around behind the insulation.
I think maybe we’ll leave our bat colony alone.
At least the caterpillars are thriving.
She sure didn’t wash the windows.
I looked out my windows last night and saw this big bright green Scudderia hanging out on the glass door. Man, I am itching to get out and do some field studies, but it’s not happening for a while.
I caught these two fooling around on the milkweed, naturally.
I also collected 3 Parasteatoda egg sacs nearby, so it’s not just the beetles getting in the mood.
In my state of limited mobility, the best I can do is roam around my yard looking for spiders. I’m not seeing any, other than a few Parasteatoda in the garage and compost, despite the fact that we’ve got lots of flowers, and it’s mid-July, and you’d think they ought to be thriving. We don’t even have any grass spiders!
What we do have is clouds of flies. Just hovering swarms of little bitty flies hovering around everything.
Come to my yard, spiders! There is a feast awaiting you!
It happened to be right there as I walked into the house. It’s too hot to go looking for them.
