northeast-flora-and-fauna

This Six-spotted Tiger Beetle was out for a hike last summer. Being in the family of tiger beetles , they are considered to be ferocious predators of other small arthropods, which is presumably how they got the "tiger" part of their name. Tiger beetles are also considered to be fairly fast runners, aided by relatively long legs. While us humans are generally faster, we're also vastly larger. Though the Six-spotted Tiger Beetle's mouth is good at tearing into its prey, they're not really dangerous to us humans. Supposedly you'll feel a pinch if they bite you at all, which probably only happens if you're handling them. Despite the similar names, they're not known to be friendly with Six-spotted Fishing Spiders . June 29, 2023 at Sourland Mountain Preserve Photo 301252073, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Though I hadn't photographed one before, this summer I got 2 pictures of a Six-spotted Fishing Spider . This is the 2nd one; the 1st one is here . This time the spider was closer but was partially hiding under a lily pad. (As I recall, this was one of those heat wave days; it's possible that finding shade was more of a motivator than hiding.) I guess the takeaway of this picture is that I should probably pay more attention to lily pads to see if these guys are more common than I realized. A secondary benefit is that some dragonflies and damselflies also tend to land on them. August 3, 2022 at Lord Stirling Park Photo 222581089, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

This is probably an Orchard Orbweaver in my picture. Based on the pictures in my spider field guide, I thought it looked more like a Basilica Orbweaver , but based on iNaturalist feedback and some online pictures I'm now pretty confident this is the Orchard Orbweaver. I have to admit that spider identification isn't easy for me: Many spiders are small , making it difficult to see details even with my camera's magnification. My Six-spotted Fishing Spider and Yellow Garden Spiders are reasonably good size, but they're the exceptions. My field guide generally documents their sizes in millimeters, and you'd probably be surprised how many spiders we have that are under a centimeter in size. I can attach an extra magnification lens to my camera, though getting the camera to focus is harder. It needs to be manually focused, and if I sway slightly closer or further from the spider I can lose that focus. (I have better success if I'm able to lean or brace myself again...

Here's someone I didn't tell you about earlier because I didn't initially have an ID for it, and then when an iNaturalist provided me with an ID, I had moved on to other pictures. A more recent sighting of this species jogged my memory about this spider. This is almost certainly a Six-spotted Fishing Spider , and while you might think it was named for the smallish white spots on its back, it's actually named for 6 black spots on its belly. As happens all too often, the characteristic that leads to its name works poorly as a field mark (see Ring-necked Duck ). As the name suggests, these spiders will catch (small) fish, but they're not especially picky eaters. If you're a small enough animal of any sort, you're probably on the menu. And of course if you're going to catch fish, you need to be pretty good around water. The SSFS can walk on the surface of the water or walk under the water. Because it can trap air in its abdominal hairs, it can breathe that a...