Friday Spider

Now that the goldenrod is blooming I've been looking for a yellow goldenrod crab spider doing what its name suggests it should. This morning I found one, mature, yellow and working the goldenrod--just in time to board the Friday Ark.

If it hadn't been for the fly in her jaws I probably wouldn't have seen her.

Three Crab Spiders

After a quiet period there's been quite a bit of singing lately as the birds who nest again started getting ready. So I was determined to get out for a bit of birdwatching. I did, and saw lots, but everyone looked so big! A common yellowthroat, really? It looks the size of a finch. And gradually I realized that it's the spider eyes. I am learning to pick out spider types by GISS, pulling me into tiny world.

In the far field I saw these three. Two on milkweed, one on brown-eyed susan. One was Misumena vatia (Goldenrod Crab Spider), but the other two?

Goldenrod Crab Spider on Milkweed
One was clearly something quite different, the other just a little different.

A spider of another colour

Not M. vatia, I think, but something related
I did some research, in part by checking out Bev's (Burning Silo) Crab Spider Gallery, but couldn't find a match I had any confidence in. Looking at a recent post of Bev's, possibly the last one is Misumenops asperatus.

Lovely spiders whoever they are.

Misumena vatia

One of the ambassador spiders at Spider Web Watch is the Misumena vatia, or goldenrod crab spider. So far, I've observed ten different individuals of this lovely species, seven of which are living in the front garden. Below a sampling. The first two are spiders I found at the near edge of the far field. The rest, garden dwellers, in a sequence: small, smaller, smallest.

In the late afternoon sun, having a snack
Tiny, brave, on a buttercup
Waiting on a shasta daisy
Enjoying a fly on a shasta daisy
Just a white speck, snacking on a dark speck, that turned out to be a tiny fly

Some of the juveniles (i.e., photos 1, 2, 4, and 5) might be Misumena formosipes. Take a look at the page at Spider WebWatch (and this discussion) to see the diffculties involved in distinguishing these from vatia.