Halloween Bugs

In honor of the beginning of Halloween Month (in my opinion, this holiday deserves much more than a single day), I thought I'd post some pictures of local bugs/spiders all decked out for the holiday in their brightest black and orange. We encountered both of these on our hike this morning.

This is a jumping spider of some sort doing its best velvet ant impression. I missed capturing its legs-up defensive posturing by about a nanosecond.

And here we have some sort of "true bug". I'm assuming it is some sort of assassin bug or something, but I haven't actually taken the time to try to identify it, yet.

So, as the month progresses, you can expect more Halloweenie type posts. I'll even try to find some more orange-and-black wildlife. Too bad all of our orioles have migrated away already...

Big Hairy Spider

On my way into work this morning I had to swerve the car to avoid running over a spider (how often can you say that?). A big, hairy spider. Luckily, I had our new camera beside me in the car, so I pulled over and hopped out, Canon in hand, to both help keep the spider from getting run over and to take a gabazillion pictures of it. I purposely kept these pictures pretty big, so if you click on each image, a larger version will appear so you can see more of the detail.

I think this is the fourth desert tarantula I've been able to play with since moving to Arizona. Although, he (remember, only male tarantulas leave their burrows to go search for mates) wasn't very good at holding still to give me a chance to focus the camera, so most of my pictures ended up rather blurry. He was definitely on a mission to go find a female spider somewhere nearby.

I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to get him to crawl onto my hand. I've only been able to get one other tarantula to do that (the very first one I ever saw, actually). The others have been way to skittish. This guy didn't even slow down when he got to my hand. He just strolled right onto it. Although, he did pause half way across and, moments after this picture was taken, I noticed these two rather large pointy black things (ie, fangs) being maneuvered over my vulnerable palm. It took me a second or two to figure out exactly what was happening. At that moment I felt the spider scrape its fangs lightly over my skin, for what purpose I can't really say since I quickly (but carefully, so as not to hurt the spider) removed my hand out from underneath it. I honestly don't know if he would have actually bitten me or not, but I wasn't really willing to experience it, so I decided not to put my skin within fang-reach again.

So, I let the spider go on its merry way, but not without doing my best to get some cool pictures of it.


I'm curious as to why tarantulas seem to have such large spinnerets, considering that they only spin silk to line their burrows. You can see them here protruding from the back of the opisthosoma (abdomen). He kept flexing them at me like this for some reason. I suppose it might have been a defensive or stress thing, but he never postured like he was trying to defend himself.

I love this picture because you can clearly see the spider's unique eyes. It would be pretty cool to see the world through the eyes of a spider.

At this point I figured I'd leave him to his quest. Besides, I was already late for work.

Tarantula!!!

Well, it took several months of searching, but we finally captured a tarantula on camera!

Sonja found it in our backyard this evening around 11:15pm as she was letting the dogs out. Figures that after months of carrying our camera with me whenever we go for a walk we would see one next to our front step as we're getting ready for bed. He looks much prettier in real life, actually. The picture got kind of washed out because it's so dark outside. And our camera doesn't like trying to focus using our porch light.

I'm assuming that this spider is a male, since female tarantulas spend most of their lives within a couple feet of their burrow. The males, though, leave their underground homes about the time they reach sexual maturity at ten years of age. The spend up to two months roaming around looking for females to mate with, until they either starve or get eaten by something or captured by a tarantula hawk (Here's a video of a tarantula hawk dragging off a paralyzed spider).

Anyway, this was a really cool spider. I tried to coax it onto my hand, but it looked a little on edge and we didn't want to stress it any further than he already was. Got a cool video, though.

Gila, Hummers, and a Spider or Two.

I recently got back from a short business trip to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southwestern New Mexico. It was a long drive (8 1/2 hours) but we got a lot accomplished and I got to see a park I've been wanting to visit for a while now. The park is particularly interesting since it maintains its policy of allowing visitors to enter the ruins. This gives people a unique opportunity to have some very meaningful experiences here. It's really very cool.

They have almost as many hummers buzzing around the visitor center there as we do in our backyard, so that was neat to see, too. Unfortunately, one young Broad-tailed Hummingbird decided to take a head-first dive into the plate glass window, knocking himself silly. I checked him over carefully, though, and it didn't seem like there was any significant damage done.

So I let him perch on my finger for 30 minutes or so while he recovered. When he seemed strong enough I moved him to a branch in the shadow of a large pine, where he stayed for another 15 minutes before flying off.

I'm not convinced that he'll be completely fine, since many "window casualties" often fly off initially only to die from their head injury later. There is something we all can do, though, to minimize bird strikes on your windows, particularly if you have feeders nearby and experience them regularly. You can make construction-paper cutouts of raptor silhouettes and stick them on the window. This has been shown to be particularly effective at reducing the frequency of birds flying into windows.

Finally, last week was an interesting spider week. First off, Sonja found a spider crawling around in our bathtub. She wanted me to move it outside, but upon close inspection I had a suspicion that it might actually be a brown recluse spider, and that I probably didn't want to try to pick it up. So, rather than risk getting bit by the most dangerous North American spider around, I squished it. In my defense, however, I did want a closer look at it to determine if it really was a brown recluse.

I'm convinced. Sonja, not so much. But that certainly looks like a "fiddle shape" on the cephalothorax to me.

Anyway, I got to see a much less dangerous cousin to the recluse hanging out on our window screen outside the house later that afternoon.

I think you'll agree that this Green Lynx Spider is much prettier.

Creepy Crawler Carnival #2: Giant Crab Spiders

Creepy Crawler Carnival #2

Giant Crab Spider

Heteropoda venatoria

These rather largish spiders have become somewhat of a common sight in our house since it began to warm up. They're big enough, however, to make you glance twice before deciding to ignore it or shoo it outside. Sonja's first experience with one several weeks ago was a trifle traumatic, though, considering that she was leaning in to look at a blemish on her cheek when one decided to crawl down the mirror. I guess they look even bigger (and apparently quite monstrous, considering the resulting shriek) when they're three inches from your face and crawling across their own reflection.

Sonja's gotten much more tolerant of them since watching Charlotte's Web, though. As far as movies go, I guess that's a better one for helping cure arachnophobia than others I could name. Still, I like the name Shelob better than Charlotte.

It's taken some work to finally figure out what they were, though. I have yet to find a reliable source for spider identification. Considering its size (a good 2" across when its got its legs splayed out), I had it narrowed down pretty quickly. And since wolf spiders (the only other large, non-tarantula we've got around here) don't climb walls, that limited the field even more.

The coolest part about it is the eyes, I think. You can easily see all eight of them when you look closely. Giant crab spiders tend not to spin webs, but patrol around keeping a lookout for all sorts of yummy insects to eat.