Readers’ wildlife photos

I’m still in dire need of photos, though a few kind readers have saved my onions by sending in wildlife pix. But please send in what you have: wouldn’t the Thanksgiving break be a good time to gather up your photos.

One regular who filled the gap was the reliable and skillful Mark Sturtevant, who sent in spider photos. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

There will probably be no photos tomorrow as it’s a holiday and even PCC(E) needs a break. We shall see.  Now, from Mark:

This set of pictures is dedicated to spiders that I found over a year ago.

First is a Parson Spider (Herpyllus ecclesiasticus), a running spider that commonly turns up in peoples’ houses. That is where I found this one. They are named after their white markings which are similar to the old style clergyman cravat.

We did some traveling in the summer to visit family here and there. On a trip to New Jersey, I found this Spotted Orbweaver (Neoscona domiciliorum). This was a new species for me.

We stopped off at Niagara Falls on our drive back home. Lovely water and all that, but what about the critters? There were orb webs everywhere, and here is one of the spiders. To get the view in the first picture, I am lying on my back looking straight up. Spiders in this genus (Araneus) can be challenging to identify, but based on the markings on the underside I believe this is a Marbled Orbweaver, A. marmoreus.

On a later trip to Iowa to visit my side of the family, there was this strikingly different spider, and yet it too is probably a Marbled Orbweaver, again based on critical markings. This species is highly variable, and to me some variations can even make one species look like a member of a different species.

Lets’ stay in Iowa for the next pictures. There were many Wolf Spiders around my brother’s house, and this very large and boldly marked one came up onto the porch one night. Here, I had encouraged it to come inside the house for pictures, lest it escape. This is Tigrosa aspersa, and you can see its size from the link (I would not pick one of these up, though!). I later took this lady back home in order to photograph wolf spider eye shine (they are famous for that). That will be a subject in a later post.

In the next picture is a dramatic scene where a male of the same species of Wolf Spider is being dragged away by a Rusty Spider Wasp (Tachypompilus ferrugineus). This picture was taken in haste just before they disappeared under a shed. There the wasp will lay an egg on her paralyzed prey, and the spider will be eaten alive.

Back in Michigan, I made an interesting find while looking for subjects to photograph at night. This little spider could not be identified, but the good folks at BugGuide leapt into action and managed to narrow down the ID to be a cobweb spider in the genus Theridion. Its victim appears to be a Cellar Spider.

The next spider is the Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). In some woods they can be seen hanging from their orb webs every few feet, so one may forget just how weird they are. With their top-heavy weight distribution, they practically helpless when forced to leave their web. But while in their orb web they are surprisingly nimble.

The last picture is a portrait of our lovely Striped Lynx Spider (Oxyopes salticus). These ambush spiders wait at the tops of plants for prey to come to them. This one provided some amusement during the staged session for this manually focus stacked picture, since it would at times take off to go boinging around on the dining room table like a little jumping bean.