Despite the heat, fall is clearly here.
- Early this morning a young male Common Yellowthroat visited the backyard.
- The heath and New England asters are blooming.
- Butterfly numbers are up.
At 11:30 this morning I was getting ready to install an application on the server and was glancing every few seconds out the window to see what was in the yard when I saw a yellow butterfly small enough to be a Little Yellow. I grabbed the binoculars and ran down the stairs and outside. The yellow butterfly was gone, but there was enough activity to warrant quick sunscreen application and donning of wide-brimmed hat and long-sleeved shirt.
During the 45 minutes I was in the yard I saw around 6 Eastern Tailed Blues, 2 Gray Hairstreaks, 2 Common Buckeyes, and 2 Monarchs. The most heavily blooming aster was the one near the garden spider’s web. Of course it was the one attracting the hairstreaks and blues, and they were living very dangerously (if you look closely, you can see the web in the background on the left side of the photo).
Too dangerously for one, it turned out. The victim is not necessarily the individual in the photo above. I thought the unfortunate in the web might have been a hairstreak instead.
The spider is very fast. I had turned away for only a moment; when I turned back it was already wrapping its prey.
I first saw the spider in the yard on August 25. A dead Monarch was lying in the switchgrass near where I was weeding. When I looked closely I saw silk on it but still didn’t see the web right away. Fortunately, I saw the spider and its web before I inadvertently destroyed them both. I was thrilled that it had found my yard and am pleased it’s been able to sustain itself here. Web of life and all that.