northeast-flora-and-fauna

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...

Don't you hate it when you flutter over to a nectar source to get a drink, only to be killed by a a spider? That appears to be the situation for this unfortunate  Painted Lady butterfly. As tragic as this is for the butterfly, spiders have to eat too. (Cue the Circle of Life music.) This picture doesn't provide a good look at the spider. I'm suspicious of a crab spider because they don't trap prey with webs and they're known to lurk near flowers in hopes of grabbing a pollinator. ( Wolf spiders don't use webs either, but I think they're usually on the ground, and are more like active hunters rather than passive ambush predators.) I wish I had a good look at the legs; a lot of the crab spiders have front legs that are much longer than their back legs. I'm afraid all I can authoritatively tell you about the spider is that it didn't starve on this day. July 14, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 148186889, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)