18 July 2017

Said the spider to the ’fly...

It's hot here again. Yesterday the temperature up in the loft got up to nearly 90ºF. What a summer we are having. This morning at 5:45 a.m. it's 77ºF — 25ºC — in the house, with all the windows and doors open as wide as possible. There's not a breath of air stirring. I just turned on two electric fans.


Sunday morning I took my camera out on the walk with Natasha. I took a bunch of macro photos, and here are four of them. I was taking a photo of a Queen Anne's lace (wild carrot) flower when I noticed there was a white "crab spider" sitting on it, camouflaged.


Crab spiders are fierce hunters, apparently, but the butterfly below had nothing to fear from the spider above — it was too far away.


It was not very close to me either, but I was able to get these two photos using the zoom lens on my camera. I tried to get closer to the butterfly, but it fluttered away each time I approached.


I didn't even know whether I had managed to get a photo of the butterfly until I got home and displayed these on the computer screen. The butterfly has some wing damage from an encounter of some kind. As usual, you can enlarge the images by clicking or tapping...

7 comments:

  1. Beautiful. And that crab spider is amazing.

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  2. Love these photos, especially the first one.

    In a little more than an hour, I'll be leaving for my own Tour de France. I'm looking forward to it. Day after tomorrow, I'll be in your vicinity on my way to Bayeux, but not close enough to be able to pay you a visit.

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    1. Yes, it's too bad there were no accommodations available in the immediate Saint-Aignan area. Bon voyage !

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  3. I hope you don't mind but I skipped looking at the spider and went straight to the Butterfly :) Great photos ...
    I wish my brother would go on his own Tour de France/anywhere ... he is an avid bicyclist and does small town events but he would love seeing the world from the seat of a bicycle :)

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  4. Great pictures. I would have thought the spider was part of the plant if you hadn't pointed it out.

    Wow you guys have had unusually warm temperatures. We have too, and unusually high humidity as well. Today it is 90% (!) humidity with sunshine.

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  5. What a beautiful spider!

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