Sunday, May 23, 2010

A ball of many spiderlings

Undisturbed
In the woods, looking for mushrooms, I kept seeing these little yellow clumps of something that looked like seed pods or something. It was made up of individual balls about the size of a millet seed, like in birdseed. I actually thought a bird had regurgitated a lump of seed hulls (not knowing if anybody actually does that, besides owls--here's a nice one). Finally I decided to take a closer look at one (almost everything's worth taking a closer look at, I've discovered), and when I reached down to move aside some leaves, the whole thing--well, "exploded" is a good word. Only not very fast, and quietly.

So then I kept finding them, and I would blow a puff of breath on them and watch them do that.

They are a type of orb weaver spider, according
to the crew at bugguide.net.                                             
Slightly disturbed

Fully disturbed






































I haven't sat around and watched them pull back together into a ball, which I assume they do, but who knows. What I do know is they are really, really tiny cute little yellow spiderlings.