This argiope caught and wrapped up a grasshopper. In the small picture to the left, you can see (to her right and slightly behind her) the male argiope -- tiny and unremarkably colored. That means that mating season is upon us for these spiders, though I don't even want to think about how that works. In other mating news, boy... did I see some crazy dragonfly stuff today. It was an afternoon for big dragonflies... there were pondhawks and skimmers and darners and saddlebags all over. The female pondhawks were depositing eggs in the water, which was cool. But what I'd never seen before... this couple mating on the wing was being bombarded by another male, I guess trying to break them up. He just banged into the mating pair repeatedly, and they flew really high to get away, and he followed them... it was crazy. A dragonfly fight.
It's dragonfly mating season down here too. I saw almost the same thing with a pair of Common Green Darners mating and a second male trying to break them apart. It didn't work here either. :-)
ReplyDelete