Category: spiders

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 23, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos are from Dean Graetz, who’s compiled various assorted photos, each with a story. Click on the photos to enlarge them; Dean’s stories and captions are indented.

Photos with a Story

Photography makes my life interesting.  I photograph scenes that look interesting and then explore the story they have to tell.  Almost always, the story is far more interesting than my photograph.  Here are eight examples of photos and their story.

This is the most beautiful flower I know. It is a dry country ephemeral and its (arterial) blood-red flowers are stunning. It is much loved and cultivated under the name Sturts Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa).  Its story is from the ‘Dreamtime’ mythology of Aboriginal people.  A young women (and child) who were promised to a Warrior eloped with another man: an act punishable by death.  The vengeful jilted Warrior tracked them, and at night, killed all three.  At dawn, he was horrified to find these flowers growing where blood had been spilt.  No matter where he fled, dawn relentlessly revealed the persecuting blood flowers, displaying his crime and eventually destroying him.:

The story of this ‘cute’ image is a technological one.  The water-repellent waxy cuticle of this sturdy leaf forces the rain drops to coalesce and form slightly-flattened spherical globules.  Each globule now acts as a lens visibly enlarging details of the underlying leaf surface.  A natural microscope.  In the1670s, an amateur Dutch scientist, Leeuwenhoek, made the first microscope using simple glass beads—a globule lookalike—as lenses.  His invention significantly and irreversibly enhanced human observing power and began the critical science of microbiology.  Since before and after, with raindrops and waxy leaves, Nature continues to demonstrate its small-scale microscopes:

A near-spherical, balanced granite rock poses three questions: why round, why balanced, and how did it get there?  Roundness is a granite characteristic because it (exfoliate) weathers in large slivers (see LHS edge below) like a peeling orange.  The rock is balanced because a line through its centre of mass passes through the contact area with the base rock – thus perfectly vertical.  Because there is no hard rock connection between the balanced and its base, how did it get there?  The geological answer is a step-wise process beginning with the cooling and cracking of liquid magma, millions to billions of years ago, then chemical weathering of hard rock to less resistant material, and finally the eroding away of the softer material.  So, the balanced rock in the picture is the remnant core of very, very much larger volume of granite now removed – like the pit/stone of a peach.  It is difficult to accept this explanation because we just cannot grasp the vast expanse of time involved, but the circumstantial geological evidence is there:

A female Leaf Curling Spider (Phonognatha graeffei) hidden by the structure she built, waits for the vibrations of flying insects struggling in her web.  This one species, though common, has an uncommon set of behaviours such as selecting a leaf, curling and silking it into shape, then hauling it up from ground level and centring it into a funnelling web.  The sexes cohabit in separate locations within the sheltering leaf.  This spider’s story raises the usual two questions.  The Why question is easy – because it obviously works.  The species is sufficiently abundant to be labelled Common.  How could such a strategy come to be?  There is the usual blind faith assertion of Big G’s intelligent design.  Or the reasoned argument that because the behaviour is instinctive, not learned, then it must be heritable and therefore likely variable.  Thereafter, Nature will relentlessly reward the strategy that ‘works best’, as it has done here:

This is a difficult photo to interpret.  I was shooting straight up into the sky.  The uppermost layer is actually a shelf or ledge projecting out over the lower rock wall.  The story here is based on two features.  There are two very different rock types with a very sharp boundary between the two.  The upper layer appears to have been smeared over the lower.  The upper is a layer of rocky ‘rubbish’, materials of diverse types and sizes jumbled together.  It looks like what a bulldozer blade might push up.  The bulldozer here was a glacier.  The timing was about 720 million years ago when this part of the Australian continent was located at the Equator.  Now known as the Sturtian Glaciation, it began the speculation that planet Earth may once have been Snowball Earth.  Geological timing and ages are always thought-provoking:

This magnificently gaudy grasshopper introduces an intriguing story.  Locally known as Leichhardt’s Grasshopper (Petasida ephippigera), its flamboyant colouring says, ‘don’t eat me’.  It is not common, found only on certain plants in three areas of northern Australia.  The intriguing story is about Leichhardt, a young man seeking fame and fortune as an explorer and naturalist.  Which he did with his 1845 expedition (4000 km, 2500 m, 443 days long).  On that long walk, he encountered and described this grasshopper species noting their abundance.  Subsequently, he achieved lasting fame with his 1848 expedition to span the East to West coasts of the continent (4000 km, 2500 m), an expedition that completely disappeared without a trace.  Interestingly, so did the namesake grasshopper.  It was assumed extinct until positively identified more than a hundred years after their 1845 description of abundance.  I photographed this one in the same type of country where Leichhardt first saw them.  This was a minor thrill because I had long known the story and had speculated where in Australia’s deserts the 1848 Leichhardt party had ‘done a perish’:

Kenya (30 years ago): Day1.  Field work with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).  My local (Kikuyu) Assistants are using my soil colour charts to determine the colour classification of their skin.  I had explained to them that Melanin determined the skin colour of all humans: colour variation was in the amount and packaging.  My sermon concluded with the statement that no people were Black.  Very dark Brown: Yes.  But not the derogatory Black.  My two Assistants agreed but were quite sure that the Maasai were Black.  I knew that the Kikuyu disliked the Maasai and thought this statement reflected cultural bias, not fact.  Nobody was Black!:

Kenya: Day2.  UNEP added a young woman to the fieldwork.  Neither of us knew why.  A young American non-scientist, who was very excited to be out in the African Bush.  My concern was that bra-less may be comfortable but potentially unwise.  Come noon, universal lunchtime, with the wonderful lunch packs the tourist hotels provided.  Right on time, two Maasai appeared, both armed, announced by my retreating Assistants as “Trouble, Bwana, trouble!”  I did think then that it could turn into an SOS moment (aka Shit!  Oh!  Shit!).  However, it was peacefully resolved by international trade.  The two Maasai agreed to one photograph and a swift departure for two unopened lunch boxes, one Australian and one American.  She thought it was all thrilling.  I was both hungry and wrong.  The skin colour of one Maasai was the darkest I had ever seen.  But Black?  I plead selective breeding because the Maasai value Black as a spiritual ‘strong’ colour and that could influence mate choice.  My Kikuyu Assistants were delighted that they knew more than the Bwana:

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 10, 2026 • 8:15 am

Stalwart regular and crack arthopod photographer Mark Sturtevant has sent us photos of spiders, lepidopterans, and assorted insects. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The various arthropods shown here were all photographed from my area in eastern Michigan. Most were taken in the field, but a couple were staged shots. Let’s begin with spiders.

The first is a new species for me. This is the Butterfly Orbweaver, Araneus pegnia. The name comes from the white four-lobed marking on the abdomen. Although very stretched in this gravid female, in thinner individuals it does look like a four-winged butterfly.

Next up is my highly reliable always-there-for-me-in-case-I-need-it jumping spider, usually called the Tan Jumping Spider (Platycryptus undatus). They are common on our shed, but lately they are also turning up on our front and back porches. This is perhaps because I often leave the porch lights on these days to draw in nocturnal insects. This adorable male was photographed as a manual focus stack on the dining room table. You can see the reflection of my home-made flash diffuser in the eyes, along with the black outline of the lens. As usual, I forgot to remove the clamp of the Raynox diopter lens that is used to boost magnification, and so you can see that too in the reflection.

A small obsession with me lately is shown with the next spider. This is the Candy-striped Spider, Enoplognatha ovata, and she has the remains of a small Hemipteran on a daisy flower where she was hanging out. Candy-striped Spiders are in the family of cobweb-weaving spiders (which includes our common house spiders and widows), but this species lives our in the sunshine, and is commonly seen lurking just under the flowers of herbaceous plants. One item of notoriety about them is that they prowl around their plants at night, looking for sleeping insects which then never wake up. So, I regularly scour our gardens to keep track of the known spiders to see what they have been up to. They almost always have prey on hand, and after a good night they may have several insects with them. I call these collections “a little shop of horrors”, inspired by their nocturnal habit of dining out.

The last of the spiders is a Hammock Spider, Pityohyphantes costatus. They build untidy hammock-like webs on plants in forests, and they too seem to do quite well. This one got a Long-legged Fly (Dolichopodidae), which are super alert flies with very fast reflexes as any macrophotographer will know:

That will be all for spiders. Next up are Odonates. This little damselfly is the Eastern Forktail (Ischnura verticalis). I really need to get more damselfly pictures since there are so many species that I have never photographed. A long focal length macro lens would help immensely!

The next Odonate is one of my favorites. This is the Calico Pennant Dragonfly (Celithemis elisa). Mature males like this one are stunningly colored with deep reds, while the similar females have yellow coloration:

A place that I call the Magic Field has a very dense population of grasshoppers. One of my favorite species commonly seen out there are the Carolina Grasshoppers (Dissosteira carolina), But surely everyone in the U.S. and parts of Canada are familiar with them. Adults have boldly contrasting black and yellow hind wings, as shown in the linked picture, but with wings folded at rest they are well camouflaged. The grasshoppers are divided about evenly into two color morphs, and these are shown here as nymphs that were picked up in the Magic Field for staged pictures on the dining room table. The combined picture is a bit of post-processing trickery since they were photographed separately:

The next picture is a katydid that was also found in the Magic Field. This is a nymph of the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid (Scudderia furcate). It was systematically cleaning all 6 feet without any concern about my proximity:

The little planthopper in the next picture was pulled in from the porch lights mentioned above. This is Tylozygus bifidus:

Lets’ wrap this up with Lepidopterans. It is always a special day to find the caterpillars of giant silk moths, but the species that seems almost common are Promethea Moth caterpillars (Callosamia promethea). These grow into beautiful pastel colored caterpillars the size of large pickles, and later into a palm-sized moth like the one shown in the link. But for now, these youngsters were the size of rice grains. The younger caterpillars tend to stay together through their early instars. It was neat that they had even molted together.

The swarm of recently hatched caterpillars in the next picture were found on a swamp milkweed leaf, so they should be Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars (Euchaetes egle). These don’t look like much now, but later they grow into flamboyantly furry caterpillars.

Lastly, we have our largest butterfly, the Giant Swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes). I was following it for some time, taking pictures, and here it was nicely photo-bombed by a Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens):

Readers’ wildlife photos

August 5, 2026 • 8:15 am

We have only a few batches left, and I am baffled about why few submissions are coming in. Please, if you have photos and appreciate this site, send me some good ones. Thanks!

Today’s photos come from Marcel van Oijen in the Netherlands. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

A Dutch Garden in Summertime

Marcel van Oijen

This summer we spent two weeks in the Netherlands, looking after the house of Nellie and Roel who count as both family and close friends. The following nine pictures were taken in their garden in the small town of Woudenberg, in the central Dutch province of Utrecht. Even though the Netherlands are just 700 km away from us (we live in Scotland on the opposite side of the North Sea), temperatures were about ten degrees higher there which made for much more varied wildlife.

This is a Willow Emerald damselfly (Chalcolestes viridis), recognisable from its brownish eyes. We never see damselflies or dragonflies in our garden here, so this was a huge and pleasant surprise:

Small White butterfly (Pieris rapae). Very common on both sides of the pond:

Vagrant Darter dragonfly (Sympetrum vulgatum). The species can be identified from its yellow-black legs, and its overall yellow colour tells us it’s a female;

Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta). A very common butterfly also here in Scotland:

Another Pieris butterfly, a Green-veined White (Pieris napi). I find the various Whites often difficult to photograph because they are so restless, but here they took their time feeding, maybe because the heat was too much even for them, or the flowers contained more nectar than usual?:

This European Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus) was a joy to follow during our days in the garden, when it was making or repairing its web, or scurrying toward the foliage whenever I got too close. Here it is wrapping up some prey (a hoverfly perhaps) for dinner later.

The sky was not really this featureless white, but I overexposed this picture of a Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) by two stops to make the picture look somewhat like a Chinese print:

And here is its larger cousin, a Great Tit (Parus major), with tiny prey:

We finish with one of the most common hoverflies in Europe, a Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus). This photo was taken while sitting at the breakfast table in the garden, where they would be hovering near the same flowers every morning, so I could focus the camera first and then simply wait for one of them to appear in the right spot:

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 11, 2026 • 8:15 am

Mark Sturtevant has been kind enough to send the last batch of photos I have, some lovely ones of arthropods. Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The various arthropods shown here were all photographed from my area in eastern Michigan. Most were taken outdoors where I found them, but a few were staged shots. Let’s begin with spiders.

First up is a species of Hammock Spider, Pityohyphantes sp. These make a small but densely tangled web across leaves and branches in the woods.

Next is an Orchard Orbweaver spider (Leucauge venusta). This is as I found her along a forest trail, but usually they are in their web at an angle where it’s awkward to photograph them. I don’t know what the growths are on the leaf:

The next two pictures are staged focus stacks from the ‘ol dining room table. First is a male Long-jawed Orbweaver (Tetragnatha sp), followed by a slightly older picture of a female for comparison. I favor staged settings for these spiders since they are extremely flighty, and I just don’t have the inclination to lay down in the tick-infested grass near water where they are abundant. What I always say about these very elongate spiders is that their startling appearance is simply because they use their long chelicerae and fangs as delicate chopsticks for handling prey, and they are as harmless to you as a piece of Dandelion fluff. The extra gnarly chelicerae on the male are further modified for mating. During that dangerous time, the pair will grapple face to face with their fangs, and the male uses those upward spurs to hold open the fangs of the female. His very long pedipalps are meanwhile needed to transfer sperm to her genital openings which are waaaay back on her abdomen. This can be seen in the linked picture:

Moving on to insects, next up is an Ichneumon wasp. With the help of iNaturalist, I am inclined to identify this parasitic wasp as Coelichneumon navus:

The common woodland fly in the next picture is possibly a wasp mimic, but it is certainly a predator. It is a species of Robber Fly belonging to the “Laphria canis complex” of very similar species:

The moth shown in the next picture is in the Tiger Moth family (Arctiidae). This is the Isabella Tiger Moth Pyrrharctia isabella, but possibly everyone knows the caterpillar, which is the famous Wooly Bear. The moth came to the porch light one night:

I can’t identify everything, even with the considerable help of AI. All I got for the caterpillar in this picture is that it is some species of “inchworm”, family Geometridae, but I already knew that. The dark puncture mark on the body may mean that it has been parasitized, and if so then it is doomed:

The next picture is a first for me. This is a Pennsylvania Ambush Bug nymph (Phymata pennsylvanica). I have seen high hundreds of adults, which are sit-and-wait predators on flowers and decorated to resemble flower parts. But like my failure to ever see a live Cornish hen (has anyone?), I have never seen a juvenile Ambush bug! I believe that the youngsters stay down low in the foliage:

The insects in the next two pictures are commonly called Red-banded Leafhoppers (Graphocephala coccinea). This species is polymorphic in that some are green and red, and others are a lovely blue and red, as shown with the mating pair. That picture is about 10 years old, but I’ve brought it back for comparison. The picture was taken with my olde camera that had a simple 50mm lens converted to a macro lens with extension tubes. If anyone wants to try out macrophotography, you really don’t need a true macro lens. At least not right away:

The final picture is a species of planthopper that I have not seen for a long time. I call this the “White Derbid”, after its color and its family name Derbidae. The species is Otiocerus coquebertii, and like the other odd -looking members of its family, it may be found by slowly walking along forest trails and peering under the leaves of tree:

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 11, 2026 • 8:15 am

Mark Sturtevant is back with some arthropod photos for us. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Today we have another set of pictures of arthropods from my area in eastern Michigan. Some of these were taken in the field and others were in a staged setting on the faithful dining room table.

During recent summers, I have been using cheap black lights on the front and back porch to attract more insects, and many new species have arrived as a result. One was this floofy moth that is clearly in the tiger moth (Arctiidae) family, but it was new to me. I believe this to be Spilosoma latipennis. If so, it should have hot pink legs, as shown in the link, but I did not know at the time to check for that:

Another arrival was this species of chafer beetle. This is an Oriental Beetle (Anomala orientalis). It is an invasive species from Asia that is becoming a minor pest here on turf grasses and other plants:

Moving on to spiders, here is a new species of spider called the Western Lynx Spider (Oxyopes scalaris). Lynx spiders can be easily recognized by their form, and especially by those prominent leg spines. They are sit-and-wait predators on plants. This male was missing one of its pedipalps, so I used editing tricks to replace it:

Next up is a lovely Orchard Orbweaver (Leucauge venusta), which had built its web across a seldom-used path in the woods. I had to stand on tippy-toes to get several partial focus stacks, and this final picture was grafted together by hand, piece by piece from those pictures. I really like their iridescent abdomens that look like antique porcelain, and those beautiful green legs. She was eating an unidentified Syrphid fly:

The next two pictures show a flashy jumping spider that I have only seen a few times. This is the Thin-spined Jumping Spider (Tutelina elegans), but to me it will always be called ‘the purple jumper’. The pictures were both taken in a staged setting, where the first is a focus stack, again needing much assembly, and the second was a “lucky shot” single frame. Lucky because she never once stood still, and she was always waving her front legs. I wonder if these spiders are trying to be ant mimics:

Back to insects. Folks here will have seen this one many times now, but it is still special. This is the Wasp Mantidfly (Climaciella brunnea). I won’t repeat again the improbable life cycle it has as a parasitoid on spider egg sacs. You can clearly see that it shows convergent evolution on praying mantids, and at the same time it is a wasp mimic. More specifically, it mimics various species and regional color variations of paper wasps (Polistes sp.). A detail about that which I think is really neat are its two-toned pigmented wings, which is an ersatz way to get its wings to resemble the wings of its models.

I show our local model wasp (P. fuscatus) in the next picture for comparison. Paper wasps have an extra crease that folds their wings length-wise, so the wings are dark and narrow. The mantidfly does not have the crease, so it fakes it with pigment:

Speaking of mantids, I finish with an amusing story about the next picture. This is a Chinese Praying Mantis (Tenodera sinensis), in hand, and the picture was taken with the Opteka 15mm wide angle macro lens. This fully manual lens is the most difficult lens that I own since to get the depth of focus that is much of the point for this kind of photography, one has to stop down the aperture to about f/32. As a result you are taking pictures with a pinhole camera, and focusing is done by guesstimation. Meanwhile, the working distances are extremely short so an insect subject is practically touching the lens. Anyway, she wasn’t having any of it, and quite honestly I was having a hard time keeping this big girl under control. So I made a short movie about the struggle, and attached an appropriate sound track to it. For those who have handled one of these insects, you know they will do what they want to do, and what they want to do is climb:

Sound up for the movie!

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 7, 2026 • 9:15 am

Today we have a potpourri of photos from several readers. Their captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

From Robert Lang:

Every few days I drive up to Altadena to check on the progress of our rebuild. Now, 14 months after the fires of January 2025, the neighborhoods are starting to come back to life again with the sounds of hammering and sawing, but the animals that had come down from the hills still consider the area to be their own. This bobcat (Lynx rufus) wandered into the empty lot next door while I was checking on our own home’s progress:

Although our metal mailbox survived the fire, we’ve redirected all mail to our temporary home for the time being. Nevertheless, people occasionally stuff their own junk flyers into the mailbox. To help dissuade them from their paper spam, this  Western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus) has taken up residence on the front of the mailbox. When disturbed, she retreats to her cozy cubbyhole under the handle, which is right where you’d put your fingers if you were going to open the mailbox to stuff something inside:

Seeing eye to eye: this California Ground Squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi) and Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) are trying to decide who gets the top of the rock. Photograph by Merrilee Fellows.

From Todd Martin; a photo taken in, I believe, the Yucatan:

We encountered the ocellated turkey,  (Meleagris ocellata), appropriately enough, on Thanksgiving day, I had no idea what it was though and took it for a brightly colored pheasant. It wasn’t posing as nicely, but this picture gives a better sense of the iridescent feathers:

And from Keira McKenzie in Perth, Australia, we have three shots of the willie wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys):

The first is taken at a neighbour’s place. She feeds him so he comes every morning:

The other two are taken at Hyde Park.

They are called Djiji Djiji in Nhe Noongar language,  which is much like the chittering it makes when cross or wary. The Latin name is Rhipidura leucophrys/

Despite being known for their chittering, they are also incredibly melodic. They wag their tails from side to side, but are actually the largest of the fantails.

They are known for their outrageous courage and will take on anything – cats, eagles, hawks, people – and win! Every time 😀

They are an utter delight and common all over Australia (though the ones in my neighbourhood have gone along with the trees – the increasing heat has caused them to stop nesting in my front yard).

And they are tiny. Tiny and mighty 🙂

They are very cute. And fierce with their white eyebrows over their bright black eyes 🙂

From Mark Gregor-Pearse in Texas:

This Great Egret (Ardea alba) was photographed on March 9, 2026, at the Puente Río Cuale in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with an iPhone 17 Pro. These large wading birds hunt by remaining perfectly still before striking with lightning speed to spear fish, frogs, and other small aquatic prey. Males and females look nearly identical, so it is difficult to determine the sex from a photo. In the early 1900s, Great Egrets were nearly driven to extinction because their delicate breeding plumes were prized for women’s hats. Public outrage over the slaughter helped launch the modern bird conservation movement:

And a cat from Pratyaydipta Rudra:

I am hoping to send some photos for readers’ wildlife when I get some time. Meanwhile I thought you may enjoy this photo of a stray cat from India (a friend sent it to me). It really wants to experience the “magic”, but alas! It’s too expensive. 

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 6, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today’s photo come from reader Jan Malik, who took them in New Jersay. Jan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

As an appendix to the earlier Tree Swallow pictures, here are a few more from the New Jersey Botanical Garden. A walk in that park on the first day of spring is a ritual of mine—to ensure all observable phenomena related to spring are happening again and that the thermal death of the Universe is postponed for yet another year.

Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) pausing mid-search for food. This is a female; in this species, the red plumage is restricted to the nape and the area above the bill, whereas males sport a continuous red cap:

Spring Snowflake (Leucojum vernum, possibly var. carpathicum), a Eurasian transplant. It looks succulent, but this perennial defends itself against mammalian browsing by producing bitter, poisonous alkaloids:

Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) hiding in bearberry brambles. Against this notorious garden destroyer, only the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch offers a true degree of protection:

Forsythia (Genus Forsythia) in bloom—the unmistakable sign that spring has arrived:

White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis). Like the woodpecker, it is a connoisseur of arthropods hiding in bark. however, by being equally adept at feeding head-down or head-up, it finds insects that a woodpecker might miss:

Common Water Strider (likely Aquarius remigis) emerged from its winter hiding. These are predators and scavengers of insects trapped on the surface of slow-flowing streams. As a “true bug,” it has evolved to exploit surface tension. However, surface tension alone doesn’t keep it dry; the secret lies in the dense, hydrophobic hairs on its tarsi. These trap air to act as tiny “dinghies,” preventing the legs from being wetted by capillary action:

Crocus flower (likely a Woodland Crocus, Crocus tommasinianus). The flowers emerge before the leaves, which then die back in late spring after accumulating enough biomass for the year. This adaptation to montane meadows and early forests allows them to bloom early, while withdrawing underground provides a defense against browsing:

Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) picking bittersweet fruit (likely the introduced Oriental Bittersweet, Celastrus orbiculatus). The fruit is indeed slightly sweet—a fact I confirmed before spitting it out, as they are reportedly toxic to humans. As they say: don’t try this at home; try it in nature instead:

After the meal, the mockingbird sits quietly in a nearby bush. They mimic other birds’ calls, possibly to fool rivals into thinking a territory is already occupied. It doesn’t work on me, though—I can always tell the original bird from the imitation:

Snowdrop (Genus Galanthus), another Eurasian immigrant. Most of the plants in these pictures were introduced from Eurasia to the Americas; however, with the exception of the Bittersweet, they are generally not considered invasive:

A Jumping Spider. I can’t vouch for the exact ID, but it resembles Phidippus princeps. While not my best shot, it’s worth noting that, like all others in this series, it was taken with a single lens (Canon RF 100-500mm)—a blessing for a lazy photographer.

An Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), looking lean after winter and digging for roots and grubs in the lawn. This species is an unwelcome sight in Europe, where its introduction is displacing the native Red Squirrel. But can we really blame them? They are simply good at being squirrels. It is entirely a human fault that geographical barriers are collapsing. In this “Homogecene” era of a connected world, the total number of species will inevitably decline: