Photo Adventures with Curiosity and Learning

Started the morning with no specific objective. I've been looking for the Argiope aurantia that I watched paint her stabilimenta 3 weeks ago - She moved and I found her and then she moved again and this morning I found her near this toad

Here she is sleeping on a grape leaf with a mite watching

Argiope aurantia

Near by is a damselfly

But I could not get close enough to capture the mosaic structure of her eye

Then a little to the left of the damselfly was a pair of mating stick insects

and a Leaf Hopper

A side (sort of) view

Then the big surprise - Dolomedes albineus on the side of a large leafy plant

Another view

and a wasp nest

I returned to the plant home of D. albineus and managed to spook her. She slowly disappeared - but I looked down the leaf of this huge plant and there she was hiding

Then back to the A. aurantia who managed to wake up and build a primitive web. Later in the afternoon - I returned and she had painted her stabilimenta

Walking home - cloud reflections in the lake. A very productive morning. I'll return and try to get better images of extracting multiple fibers as she paints her stabilimenta

C. Frank Starmer

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