This post is inspired by a recent post on the Withywindle Nature blog about spider watching.
Cynthia, a naturalist, blogged about her observations of a spider spinning its web at her father’s house. I loved that she was so mesmerized by the spider and the work that was involved with building a web. She took notes and shared them on her blog. The photo her husband took of her observing the spider was great.
It reminded me of the spiders my husband found under our front porch as he was taking out some old lattice. He is not a fan of spiders and, though I didn’t see this in person, I’m pretty sure he jumped super high and swatted the air as if he had spiders crawling all over him when he saw them.
He made sure to capture them under a couple of cups so that he could show me how big they were and how brave he was. Or something. I took a picture.
OK, so maybe we’re not big spider watchers over here. I almost ran away down the sidewalk when I saw these things.
What I like about the Withywindle blog is that Cynthia gets me thinking more about nature. And she gets me observing more too. Like when my youngest son and I were playing in our driveway with sidewalk chalk and noted an ant carrying a dead fly. We watched the ant carry it well across the driveway and into the grass. We noted how much bigger the fly was than the ant. And though the ant had some trouble, it kept on going and didn’t give up.
As we watched, we saw that there was another ant carrying what looked to be a dead moth. I watched both ants as they struggled with their catches and disappeared into the tall grass (we need to mow). At this point, Biz lost interest, but I kept watching. I could still see glimpses of the ants carrying their bounty in the grass. And then I saw another one holding a dead ladybug.
Here’s where I decided there must be some sort of ant potluck dinner going on. Because, well, I don’t know much about bugs and that was the best explanation I had at the time. What do you think?
Linking up with the Withywindle Nature Blog for Windows on Wildlife.
