Explore Outdoors ~ Spiders in my Garden

 I have so many different kinds of spiders that hang out in my garden. Crab spiders, often matching the colors of the flowers, wait to ambush a fly or bee that drops by to sip nectar or collect pollen. Jumping spiders scurry across leaves, on the hunt. Others spin sticky nets between flowers to capture bees and flies who aren't paying attention to where they're going. Last month I counted five silk-wrapped, bee-shaped burrititos dangling from a garden spider's web. She'd won the real-estate lottery, setting up shop between two tall coneflower stems.

 

This week, check out the spiders

living in your neighborhood!

 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Finding Beauty

 Every day I look for a bit of beauty in the natural world around me. Some days I get lucky and find diamond-studded spider webs clinging to the bridge railing. This usually happens in the early morning after a humid night (in this case the humidity was over 90%)

What beauty do you find in the natural world surrounding you?

Explore Outdoors ~ Who is Hiding in the Bok Choy?

 

 

A couple weeks ago I was weeding the garden and I noticed a web across the top of the bok choy. A funnel web - you can see the opening of the web forming a funnel down the curvature of the leaf. The spider hides inside the funnel. When an insect lands on the web, the spider will run out and check to see if it's prey. If it is, the spider bites it and the fast-acting venom kills the insect within a couple seconds. Then the spider drags the prey down the funnel before eating. Not only does the funnel affords protection for the spider, but dining indoors prevents other insects from recognizing potential danger.

Funnel spiders are shy, so if you want to get a good look here's how: stand so that the sun is in front of you - you don't want your shadow to scare the spider; and look closely without touching the web.

You can find out more about funnel web weavers here at the Bug Guide. You can find their webs on grass, along hedges, and in the garden. Do you have any in your neighborhood?

Explore Outdoors ~ Early morning spiderwebs

 The best time to find spiderwebs is early morning. Especially on foggy days! On this day grass spider webs filled neighborhood lawns like patchwork squares on a quilt, and orb webs filled spaces between plants, fence posts, even the railings on the bridge. What kinds of spiderwebs do you find in your neighborhood?

The best time for Spider Webs

This is the time of year I see a lot of spiderwebs. They're stretched between plants, fence wires, bridge railings - pretty much anywhere a spider can find a good hunting place. I've found that the best time to see them is early morning, when dew is still clinging to the threads.

This week head out on a spiderweb survey.

• Where do you find spiderwebs?
• How big are the webs you find? 
• How far are they from other webs?
• Can you find the spiders?
• If you can, watch a web over a day. What do you notice?
• Does the spider move her web each day?