We had a big surprise late yesterday afternoon, and the color white was part of it. No, not the white spiders, but hail! I haven't yet heard reports from other parts of Touraine, but big hailstones fell here in Saint-Aignan for two or three minutes. I'd estimate they were two to three centimeters (½ to 1 inch) in diameter, and they caused a lot of noise but no damage that we've detected so far. The clatter from the hailstones hitting the backyard greenhouse glass was almost deafening. By the time I realized what was happening and grabbed my camera, the hail shower was over. Tout est bien qui finit bien, je suppose.
Meanwhile, here are some macro photos I took a few days ago of the many white "crab spiders" that seem to live all around the hamlet and vineyard. At the end of a morning walk, I was taking photos of some of the flowers in our yard when I noticed the spider on the left, which was lurking in a red rose. The spiders are tiny.
I took a couple of photos of the flower when I noticed that the spider had jumped out to escape my prying eye (or lens). I kept taking pictures. I don't think these spiders, which are tiny, pose any danger to human beings.
Insects beware, however. The white spiders, called thomises in French, or araignées-crabes, hide in or on flowers and ambush pollinating insects that happen to come near.
The Thomisidae family of spiders includes more than 2,000 species, according to Wikipedia. Not all of them are white. And they live on every part of Earth except the north and south poles. A lot of them are able to change colors to more closely match the color of the flower they are living on.
Here in Saint-Aignan, the rumble of distant thunder was constant for 30 or 40 minutes. MétéoCiel has a screen that shows lightning strikes in real time as yellow or red dots lighting up on a map — impacts de foudre en direct — and there were thousands of them all around the Touraine region yesterday evening. On France 24 they just mentioned damage from hail in the Bordeaux and Charente vineyards a few hours southwest of here.
There were warnings yesterday on France 2 about thunderstorms for a number of départements of western France, yours included. What they call vigilance orange.
ReplyDeleteI should have added your macro photos are excellent. Comments on the tablet work only with Chrome, but it is a pain...
DeleteHail in the vineyards...I'm sure that's not good. Hope your weather goes back to warm and comfortable.
ReplyDeleteStill no detailed news about damage to the local vineyards. Down in Bordeaux, they say, there was a lot of damage, and the hailstorm lasted only six minutes. Here, it lasted only two or three minutes. I didn't see any damage when I walked through the vineyard with Tasha this morning.
DeleteMerci, Charles-Henry. I'm really enjoying the camera and Photoshop these days. I have more macro photos...
DeleteThose photos are remarkable. That little red marking must be a flower petal, no? Let's see the others you say you have.
ReplyDeleteGlad the greenhouse wasn't damaged.
Sheila, I don't think that small red marking is a flower petal since you can see that same marking on the spider when it is upside down on the next photo. It is a different spider on the wild carrot's flower.
DeleteP.S. If you google flower crab spider, you'll see that some of them have even larger red markings.
DeleteI'll also chime in with how amazing those photos are. Wow!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad that you didn't end up with hail dents on your cars, or cracks in the greenhouse. We had a big hailstorm at school once, while we were in the auditorium for an after-school performance, and the sound was absolutely deafening (and frightening, since we didn't know what it was). When we came out, I found my car peppered with little dents.
This reminds me of the childhood rhyme about the itsy-bitsy spider:
ReplyDeleteThe itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun
and dried up all the rain
and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
Although you can tell that the lyrics are likely British, because they rhyme "rain" and "again".
There's an interesting article about this nursery rhyme on Wikipedia. There are various versions of the song, some using the phrase "incy-wincy" instead of "itsy bitsy". I would assume it pre-dates the American Revolution.
DeleteI say incy wincy. My granddaughter loves this rhyme. I need to find a white spider for her to see.
DeleteAccording to the scholars at Google, incy wincy is the British and Australian version of itsy bitsy. If only answers were so readily available for life's other questions.
DeleteWe were in Chinon yesterday and there was a tremendous amount of tree litter on the roads, but no vine damage that I saw. It seems to hit big trees and broken off lots of leaves and twigs, but the lower down stuff like vines appear to be fine.
ReplyDelete