Aerial Display Over the Museum

What’s that, hovering over Explore the Wild? Is it some sort of strange experimental aircraft? No, no, it’s a spider! I’ve often encountered webs, or even single strands of spider silk, stretched across large distances such as a road, a path, or stream and wondered how the spider got the silk across the road, path or stream. Certainly, the spider didn’t attach the silk to one side, say to a tree, then walk down the trunk of the tree, throughRead more

Two Spiders, a Beetle, and a Caterpillar

The spider in the above photo had found what it thought was a safe and secure hideout, in a tarp that covers the winch at the Take Off in Catch the Wind. Spiders can be identified as to family, and sometimes to genus, by the arrangement of their multiple eyes, that is, where the eyes sit on their head (most spiders have eight eyes). The above spider is definitely a wolf spider (Lycosidae) but I wasn’t able to go any furtherRead more

Bugs on Milk Weed, Worms in Webs, a Potter, a Jumping Spider, and a Robber

Large Milkweed Bugs have hatched out as there were many nymphs on the Butterfly Weed in Catch the Wind during the first week of August. This was only a few days after seeing both Large and Small Milkweed Bugs mating and inspecting this plant. Seven days later the nymphs began to take on some of the characteristics of the adults. Fall Webworms have been at work on the Museum’s trees for a month or more. These caterpillars construct their webRead more