Grass Spider Webs

It looked like someone had too many diamond-studded hairnets, so they had just tossed them all over the grass. Here’s one in sun and one in shade. In the sun one, you can see the sky reflected in the dew. In the shade one, you can see the dark funnel-shaped hole that the spider hides in. Evidently these webs are not sticky, so if anyone (very small) happens on to it, the spider is just very speedy zipping out to grab it. Their bite paralyzes their prey, but their chompers are too small to pierce human skin. Genus Agelenopsis.

Grass Spider

Wasp Nest

Nestled in the spurge and poison ivy, a cozy wasp nest. There are two categories of wasps: solitary and social. The singletons don’t construct nests, and they’re all fertile. The socials live in colonies with thousands of their buddies and often only the queen and males are fertile; the rest are sterile female workers. Also, most wasp species are parasitic; i.e., they lay their eggs directly into the body of a host insect. Ew.

Snowberry

This is apparently a variety of Snowberry, a shrub in the honeysuckle family. Will have white berries. The inside of the berries looks like sparkling snow. A winter food supply for birds, but poisonous to humans. Native to North and Central America. (Photo by A.F. Aaron.) (He was kind enough to include a bonus Dogbane Beetle, Chrysochus auratus.)

Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus)

Bonus bug munching on Milkweed leaves: it’s a Red Milkweed Beetle (Tetraopes femoratus)