Some occasional random thoughts...
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My summer has been and education in spiders. It seems that I've always had a fascination with spiders. This summer, I was fascinated by a Spiny Orb Weaver that set up housekeeping in the corner just outside my den window. Spiny Orb Weavers have been one of my favorite spiders mainly because they weave a neat orb web and are colorful. I first noticed the little guy in May, 2007 and watched almost daily with fascination. Late in June, I was saddened to find the web gone and no spider. A few days later I was working on my bike with the garage door open and saw two very small orb webs in the yew on the west side of the garage. A close inspection revealed two of the tiniest Spiny Orb Weavers. As they molted and built larger webs, one disappeared and the other ("junior') gradually moved over to the corner of the house formerly occupied by the parent. I watched this one for about two months and by the end of August, it too suddenly disappeared. I immediately scoured the bushes looking for offspring and found "Punkin'" which has so far (October), only grown to half the size of the other two. |
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 On October 12th, Becky let me know that there were two more Spiney Orb Weavers with two major web constructions between the two trees in our front yard. I think they must be siblings of Punkin'. I got up early the next morning in hopes that I might catch the sunlight hitting the webs built between our two trees. I almost missed the show. In less than 10 minutes after I started taking photos of the web, the Sun had moved and was no longer highlighting the webs.
The mowers came about 11AM the same day and I tried to get them to save the web. They tried, but the lowest one took a big hit where it was attached to the ground and our little friends are going to need to start over almost from scratch. I checked the silk strands that are remaining at 10PM and it looks like some progress is underway. Stay tuned... |
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 This family of Orb Weavers was really putting a strain on the limits of my P&S 8Mp digital camera. |
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Random Musings 
