Sitting quietly on my deck one recent sunny afternoon, I noticed a very small movement along the edge of the railing. Upon close inspection, I saw that it was some type of dragonfly with what seemed to be purple wings and a purple head. Its size made it impossible to see clearly from where I was sitting, so not wanting to scare it away, I went inside quietly to get my field glasses. Magnified, I saw that the tiny creature was indeed purple, from its wee head and gossamer wings to its filament-sized segmented body.
I watched it for awhile and noticed others of its kind alighting elsewhere along the railing and on the deck floor. On a whim, I crept inside again and this time grabbed my camera, doubtful at this point that I'd be able to get a clear enough shot of those wondrous insects who are a boon to anyone who likes spending time outdoors and who has an aversion to mosquitoes and other pesky bugs. For it's a well-known fact that dragonflies are quite fond of mosquitoes as well as ants and whatever else they can manage to consume during their short lives.
This was not, as it turned out, a dragonfly, but a damselfly. And if my research and assessment are correct, it was a male violet dancer damselfly, a diminitive member of that insect family, called Odonata, that appeared to measure no more than one and half inches at best. The female is roughly the same size but duller in color, while the male's coloring is brighter and more pronounced. Unlike their close relatives, damselflies keep their wings close to their bodies when not in flight.
Aside from its mesmerizing color, its most striking features were its large protruding eyes and the metallic sheen of its long segmented thorax and abdomen and the delicately transparent quality of its wings. Had this insect been larger, it might have been imposing; but as such, its size enabled me to appreciate it for what it was-an intricately complex living thing that seemed to enjoy basking in the sunlight on my deck.
Sitting quietly for its own sake provides so many opportunities to see things that I'd otherwise miss in my day-to-day comings and goings, and I'm never prepared for what my vigilance and patience will reward me with, such as the very small creature making its way one afternoon in a slow undulating motion along the edge of a plant pot. It was a tiny inch worm, probably no more than one-eighth of an inch long and bright green. Or sometimes, I am so focused on the words spanning a particularly interesting page of text that I don't immediately notice a fly no larger than a pinhead land along the margin and sit there until I move and it flies away. Even with my reading glasses on, I have all I can do to distinguish its body parts one from the other and am always amazed at the intricacy present in so small a living organism.
My question when I see such tiny creatures is always the same: if they are themselves so small, then how much smaller must the food they eat be? In the case of inch worms, the answer is simple. As the larvae of adult moths, most consume vegetation, eating their way through leaves and often doing quite a big of damage in the process. But the damselfly? It seems that it eats the larvae of mosquitoes and other tiny aquatic organisms. As for the tiny flies that sometimes distract me from my reading, they tend to prefer decaying substances like most other types of flies. In short, the answer is simple though not at all discernable with the naked eye: they eat whatever they can overpower or can physically consume. For me, this adds just one more layer of mystery to the goings-on in a world that literally has no room for one of my kind. A Gulliver of sorts, I content herself with being a spectator at these mini-events, and it's not such a bad thing to be after all.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Showing posts with label insect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insect. Show all posts
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Spiders
As I lay in bed early one morning, I watched a small spider descending on a single strand of web material just outside my window. It disappeared below the sill but then reappeared as it made its way up the screen before vanishing again on one side. This went on for several minutes as the tiny yellow creature explored the area probably trying to determine whether or not it would be a good place to weave a web. I didn't watch it long enough to discern what its decision was, but long enough to realize that I had been privy to yet another process that goes on relatively unobserved by most of us during our daily activities.
Now I've never been a great fan of this particular insect. Like many people, I am unnerved by the way a spider propels itself along, and I always gasp when I see one of its kind lurking in a corner or scurrying out from a sink drain. The tiny ones tend not to bother me as much as the larger more conspicuous ones, and I've been known to recoil in horror when my hand has moved too closely to one. Yet, as much as they unnerve me at times, I am fascinated by these creatures that sometimes seem to materialize out of thin air as they hang from threads that are all but invisible.
While all spiders exude silk through a tiny opening in their abdomens, not all of them use this material for web building. Some spiders use it simply to encase the thousands of eggs they lay in a season, while others use it to help them get around via a process called ballooning. The silk liquid that the spider produces hardens the moment it hits the air, and the process involves creating a thin layer of it that is designed to catch the wind and move the spider from place to place. Of those spiders that don't build webs, some actively hunt, while others, classified as jumping spiders, leap great distances to capture their prey or to avoid imminent danger.
There are four basic species of web builders-cobweb spiders, orb weaver spiders, cellar spiders, and funnel web spiders. These spiders have the poorest vision of all and depend for their survival upon the vibrations produced when hapless intruders become entangled in their webs. Orb weavers are responsible for the intricate webs we see outside in dense shrubbery or in open fields. As a child, I remember being startled quite often when suddenly coming upon a web produced by the large and very imposing black and yellow garden spider, an event that always put the kibosh to whatever exploratory journey I might have been on. The body of the female garden spider can measure one inch or more in length, and its web can be as much as two feet wide. It spends most of its time hanging head down in the center of the the flimsy structure, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to come along. And by the way, the scary creature we call daddy-long-legs isn't a spider at all but a member of a separate insect family that only look like spiders.
It's important to keep in mind that, despite our dislike of these creatures, spiders serve an important purpose in the ecosystem by keeping house fly, mite and other problematic insect populations under control. Of course, as with all other insects, spider populations themselves can reach troublesome proportions, and there are things we can do to minimize our encounters with them that include limiting the places they might like to hide, shaking out our shoes before we put them on, stacking wood away from buildings and being vigilant when opening cardboard boxes that have been in storage for awhile.
There really is no way to predict just where or when we will come upon spiders or any other insect or bug toward which we all display varying degrees of disgust or delight. They are, like all else in nature, part of life, and yet another species with which we must coexist, albeit uncomfortably at times. For the short while I observed this particular tiny arachnid moving back and forth across my window screen that morning, I was again reminded of how many other communities exist within our own larger one and whose inhabitants are bound, as we are, to many of the same laws of nature in order to survive.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Now I've never been a great fan of this particular insect. Like many people, I am unnerved by the way a spider propels itself along, and I always gasp when I see one of its kind lurking in a corner or scurrying out from a sink drain. The tiny ones tend not to bother me as much as the larger more conspicuous ones, and I've been known to recoil in horror when my hand has moved too closely to one. Yet, as much as they unnerve me at times, I am fascinated by these creatures that sometimes seem to materialize out of thin air as they hang from threads that are all but invisible.
While all spiders exude silk through a tiny opening in their abdomens, not all of them use this material for web building. Some spiders use it simply to encase the thousands of eggs they lay in a season, while others use it to help them get around via a process called ballooning. The silk liquid that the spider produces hardens the moment it hits the air, and the process involves creating a thin layer of it that is designed to catch the wind and move the spider from place to place. Of those spiders that don't build webs, some actively hunt, while others, classified as jumping spiders, leap great distances to capture their prey or to avoid imminent danger.
There are four basic species of web builders-cobweb spiders, orb weaver spiders, cellar spiders, and funnel web spiders. These spiders have the poorest vision of all and depend for their survival upon the vibrations produced when hapless intruders become entangled in their webs. Orb weavers are responsible for the intricate webs we see outside in dense shrubbery or in open fields. As a child, I remember being startled quite often when suddenly coming upon a web produced by the large and very imposing black and yellow garden spider, an event that always put the kibosh to whatever exploratory journey I might have been on. The body of the female garden spider can measure one inch or more in length, and its web can be as much as two feet wide. It spends most of its time hanging head down in the center of the the flimsy structure, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to come along. And by the way, the scary creature we call daddy-long-legs isn't a spider at all but a member of a separate insect family that only look like spiders.
It's important to keep in mind that, despite our dislike of these creatures, spiders serve an important purpose in the ecosystem by keeping house fly, mite and other problematic insect populations under control. Of course, as with all other insects, spider populations themselves can reach troublesome proportions, and there are things we can do to minimize our encounters with them that include limiting the places they might like to hide, shaking out our shoes before we put them on, stacking wood away from buildings and being vigilant when opening cardboard boxes that have been in storage for awhile.
There really is no way to predict just where or when we will come upon spiders or any other insect or bug toward which we all display varying degrees of disgust or delight. They are, like all else in nature, part of life, and yet another species with which we must coexist, albeit uncomfortably at times. For the short while I observed this particular tiny arachnid moving back and forth across my window screen that morning, I was again reminded of how many other communities exist within our own larger one and whose inhabitants are bound, as we are, to many of the same laws of nature in order to survive.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
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