The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 140. Captions are on the photos.
You can see more responses here.
Crab spiders are small, but they build good-sized webs. They’re also not territorial, which means they’re fine having other crab spiders for neighbors. When there’s a lot in one area, walking around becomes a bit of a challenge. I’ve wrapped webs around my head so many times it’s amazing I haven’t turned into a spider myself!
I saw this female Hawaiian Garden Spider scooting up a strand of her web during a welcome rain shower. She stopped just before reaching the top and was soon the recipient of drops of water dripping from the roof. When the rain passed, she carried on up to the gutter.
I think she was getting some water to drink and possibly enjoying having a little wash. It’s been very dry here lately and water has been in short supply for the local wildlife.
The house where I live is ready for Halloween thanks to the generous numbers of spiders living around it. By the front steps, there’s a small Hawaiian Garden Spider and several crab spiders.
One day, I came home and saw a wasp flying close to the various webs. I thought it was dicing with danger, but soon saw that wasn’t the case. Instead, it would approach a web and bob its head toward the spider. It didn’t seem to be a terribly threatening act, though perhaps it was from the spiders perspective. The wasp didn’t push home an attack, but would instead fly away, settle for a bit, and preen itself.
The garden spider didn’t seemed to be bothered by the attention, but the crab spiders would drop suddenly on a strand of silk, before returning to their web as soon as the wasp moved on. I watched these maneuvers for five or ten minutes before heading inside. No webs were damaged, no spiders hurt, and I still don’t know what was really going on!
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Let’s Get Small.’ See more responses here.
Sorry to start off (above) with spiders, for those with aversions to them, but this one is very small. It’s a tiny female Hawaiian Garden Spider, probably no more than a quarter-inch across, though if it survives, it will grow to be as big as the other one in the photo.
In the gallery below, a Seven-spotted Ladybug putters about in some very green leaves. Another spider, this time a jumping spider no bigger than the little one at the top, has jumped a moth bigger than itself. Finally, what I think is a hover fly pretending to be a wasp with its black and yellow markings.
Finally, a Camponotus variegatus ant or carpenter ant. Next, a bee collecting pollen on an agave attenuata. Note the tiny aphids sharing the flower. And finally ants and aphids on the leaf of a Hawaiian Crown Flower. In this symbiotic relationship, the aphids produce sweet goodies for the ants to eat and the ants provide protection against the aphids’ predators.
I noticed that in the front border of the house, the ferns and Mother-in-Law’s Tongue or Snake Plant (Sansevieria Trifasciata) needed weeding and cutting back as there was foliage up against the house, a handy highway for ants and centipedes and who knows what else. The only problem is that, at this time of year, this little garden is guarded by a wall of spiders.
These three Hawaiian Garden Spiders are just a few of that kind there, and they’re accompanied by the usual mass of crab spiders and one or two others I’m not familiar with. I wouldn’t mind moving the crab spiders, whose main activity seems to be to build webs in places that mean they’ll end up wrapped around my head. But the garden spiders, I have a soft spot for. The females are quite beautiful and the males, while drab and tiny, are very watchable as they try to mate with the mighty females.
I guess the weeds can wait for another week or two.
I saw this Xuthus Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio xuthus) flitting by a window at home. This is how I most often spot them and by the time I go outside, they’re nowhere to be seen. Still, I’m a sucker for butterflies, so I grabbed my camera and headed out.
Looking around, I couldn’t see any sign of it. I was about to give up the search when I saw movement by a tangerine tree. I should have anticipated this because the butterfly is also known as the Citrus Swallowtail (and Asian Swallowtail). I headed over and there was the butterfly, not only hanging around, but also settling briefly as it flew around the tree. I thought it must be feeding or possibly laying eggs, but it just seemed to be stopping at leaves, and later I saw that its markings meant this was most likely a male, so not laying eggs.
However, the butterfly was not alone. Winter is crab spider season and they love building communal webs in and between the tangerine trees. It’s a hazard for me when I’m collecting fruit, but for the butterfly it’s a potential death trap. While I watched, I did see this one get stuck once, but swallowtails are big butterflies and it was able to shake itself loose.
When I first saw this spider on the front door, I thought it was a small Hawaiian Garden Spider. But after it had been there a while I got a closer look and realized it was something else and that it wasn’t going to get any bigger. I don’t know what kind of spider it is, and I don’t know if it’s going to survive there, since I’ve never seen it catch anything, but I like the shadow it casts on the door.
Graham's Island 