We have three nice arthropods today from reader Mark Sturtevant, and I’m adding a late addition from Stephen Barnard.
A young male whitetail dragonfly (Plathemis lydia). The abdomen of this male will turn white with a waxy bloom as it ages. Females of this species will not do this, and they also have a different pattern of spots on the wings.
A stonefly (tentatively Soyedina vallicularia).
The final picture is a very pregnant orbweaver, possibly the Shamrock spider (Araneus trifolium) or a related species. On the same day that I had collected this lady, the wife had visited the farmers’ market and brought home some Romanesco broccoli which is famous for its approximation to a fractal pattern. Well, clearly I should not be left unsupervised with these things. I can report that the taste of this broccoli with hollandaise sauce was rather ordinary, and not repeated on different scales as I had hoped.
And we have this ethereal photo from Stephen, which I’ve made big because it’s arty:
Trumpeter Swans (Cygnus buccinator) on a dry, still, frigid day; mist drawing up from the creek.
More great pictures!
I must be an arachnophobe because that spider creeps me out (in a good way).
Actually, they creep me out a little too, and I never handled this one. I think it is the orangey red color. But when I was a kid I would pick up these large spiders.
It must be creepy if it creeps even you out! And you have a very tolerant wife!
Um, she did not know…
LOL!
So–how did you transfer the spider to the broccoli? (And, presumably, remove it.)
Love the Odonatid & Plecopteran (if I recall my orders correctly…and they haven’t changed)!
Nice pictures! The whitetail dragonfly is beautiful. The spider is Araneus diadematus (a holarctic species), not trifolium. Both species are very seldom spotted on such fractal biotopes ;-).
The swans remind me of beautiful winter mornings along the lake here.
I see that now! Well, I was provisional in the identity. Looking at the pictures of that species in Bugguide, I can see again why I did not make the ID. They are rather variable, and most are a different color from this one.
The dragonfly was one of the first pictures I took with my long Fd lens, adapted to my camera. I did not know how to operate the aperture control correctly at the time, and this was among many pictures that I took with the aperture wide open.
The swans reminded me of Tchaikovsky and Lev Ivanov.
The bokeh behind the dragonfly is beautiful.
Nice spider too. Romanesco to me is a milder version of cauliflower and broccoli; it’s pretty, but a bit bland.
A lovely and romantic swan photo.
Gorgeous swan shot, Stephen!