As I mentioned in my last post, Kim and I visited Konza Prairie Biological Station this past weekend. While she was fighting through a long training run in the heat, I was fighting the breeze and trying to get some decent photos. It’s a good thing both of us are equally tough and resilient people and managed to deal with challenges of similar difficulty.

(As always, you can click on an image to see a bigger version. If you’re reading this in an email, click on the post title to open it online so you can click on images.)

I made it to the top of the first big hill just after sunrise and tried to capture that early light on the prairie. It was beautiful, but the effects of the severe drought on the prairie were pretty obvious. Since we were going three hours south of home, I’d expected to see more green vegetation and flowers than we have left up here. That wasn’t the case, at least not in the places I hiked.

Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty to see and enjoy. There were still flowers around, as well as lots of fun seed heads, colorful leaves, etc. Invertebrates were also relatively plentiful, and I had fun finding them.

The wind, though, was a real pain. I ended up taking a LOT of shots, hoping at least one would be sharply focused, and I tried to time shots between stronger gusts. Landscape shots were a lot easier than close-up photos because the swaying motion of plants was less of an issue at a distance. For some reason, Kim seemed to enjoy that breeze more than I did as she ran her 25 miles through the increasingly hot day. It takes all kinds, I guess.

For a while, I tried chasing grasshoppers along the edge of the trail because I figured if they were sitting on the ground, the wind wouldn’t affect them. That would have worked a lot better if they’d been willing to sit still long enough for me to creep up to them. I did manage to get close to one toothpick grasshopper, but all the others were having fun baiting me and then cackling with laughter (I may be projecting) as they hopped/flew away.

To help with both the wind and the increasing brightness of the light, I started gravitating toward copses of trees, where I could work in the diffused light near the edge of their shadows. I also photographed a lot of backlit subjects.

Smooth sumac was turning color, and I found some that was slightly sheltered from the wind. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find compositions I liked. I don’t know that I got any world-changing photos, but I got a least a few that made me happy. I love looking at the patterns of color-change within each leaf, and wondering who/what caused the little injuries many of the leaves had.

Eventually, I worked my way back toward the trail head and spent time working along the edge of the tree shadows there. That’s where I found the spiders I featured in my last post, but also lots of other insects. There was still enough breeze to be challenging, so I didn’t get photos of the monarch and other butterflies, for example, that were moving around. I did, though, manage to sneak up on a couple grasshoppers.

Other than the orb weaver spiders I watched for a long time, the other big invertebrate highlight of the day was finding two big wheel bugs. I’d seen them before, but hadn’t ever been able to photograph them (other than one that once sat on my hand just long enough for a quick shot.) These two seemed to be hunting on and around some stiff goldenrod plants.

If you’re not familiar with this kind of insect, you might reasonably think they’re fake. I can assure you they’re wheel bugs. The ‘wheel’ on their backs wasn’t as fully formed as I’ve seen before, but not in a way that detracted from their attractiveness. While the wind was pushing the goldenrod plants around, the bugs, at least, moved slowly enough that I could keep up with them as they patrolled for prey.

Wheel bugs are a kind of assassin bug, and they capture and eat prey just like their cousins do. They grab their prey and then jab their long, sharp mouthpart into them. The wheel bug then injects chemicals that paralyze and then ‘pre-digest’ the soft tissues in that hapless creature. Once its prey is sufficiently internally-liquefied, the week bug uses its tubular mouthpart like a big straw to suck up all the goodness before it discards the empty shell that remains.

Because they’re big (1 to 1 1/2 inches in length) and armored, wheel bugs look pretty scary. If you harass them, they can give you a pretty nasty bite that will make you wish you hadn’t. They’re not out to get you, though. I’ve spent a lot of time up close to various assassin bugs, including a few wheel bugs, and haven’t ever triggered them to bite me. As with most of our fellow creatures on earth, if you treat them respectfully, they’ll do the same.

It was great to be back in the Kansas Flint Hills for a while. I enjoy seeing rocks in prairie, for example, which I don’t get very often around home. The topography is also fun, especially when I’m just meandering up and down the hills (as opposed to, say, running 25 miles on a hot day). I’m grateful to be only a few hours away from such a terrific landscape.

We’re forecast to drop down to about 32 degrees Fahrenheit here tonight. That means the number of flowers and invertebrates around to photograph will also be dropping soon. It’ll still be fun to wander the prairies after that, of course. There’s a lot to look forward to this fall, including more fluffy seed heads, frosty mornings, lots of pre-winter food gathering by small mammals, and much more. I’ll miss the bees, butterflies and flowers, though.

April seems a long way off…

As often happens, watching something closely doesn’t necessarily help me understand what I’m seeing. Fortunately, a lack of clarity doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the observation! I have guesses about what was going on with the two banded garden spiders I hung out with Sunday morning, but I’ll be curious to know if any of you have additional thoughts.

Last weekend, Kim and I traveled down to Konza Prairie Biological Station, a deservedly-famous site for both prairie and research in the Kansas Flint Hills. Kim’s reason for the trip was that she wanted a site with some hills and scenery for a long training run. I was more than happy to tag along. We arrived before sunrise and both took off up the public hiking trail – at very different speeds and for very different reasons.

It wasn’t an ideal morning for photography, but was still a great day and place to enjoy a prairie hike. The strong breeze was nice for Kim, but frustrating for me, and once the sun cleared the horizon, its light became overly intense pretty quickly. After an hour or so of pleasant hiking, but limited photography options, I retreated back down to the trailhead.

There, I took advantage of some trees that were blocking some of the wind and providing a little diffused light. I looked around for insects to photograph and laughed at myself for being grateful for having trees in a prairie. That doesn’t happen very often.

I did find some interesting insects to photograph, but also spotted several big banded garden spiders (Argiope trifasciata). Since the trees were blocking some of the breeze, I decided to try photographing them on their gently-undulating webs. As I tried to decide where to start, I noticed a smaller male spider hanging out at the top of a big female’s web. It was far enough away that I had to back off and use a long telephoto lens to get both spiders in the same shot.

When a male shows up on a female’s web, it’s usually because it’s mating time. This is a very tricky situation for males, who often get caught and eaten as soon as copulation is completed. You might say the trick for the male is to get mating wrapped up without getting himself wrapped up.

As I watched, the male carefully made his way down the web toward the female. Based on prior reading, I knew there were signals he could give to alert the female that he wasn’t prey (yet) but I couldn’t pick up on anything specific he was doing. He stopped a few inches from the female and waited. That was when I noticed his missing legs. I wondered if he’d escaped a previous mating situation, but lost his legs in the attempt (this is apparently common).

After several minutes of sitting still, the male started moving again. This time, it looked like he was intentionally ‘plucking’ the web to alert the female to his presence again before crawling down to her. He quickly scrambled around her body until he was in position to deposit sperm from his pedipalps (the little appendages by his mouth) into her epigynum (the place sperm goes into a female spider).

Once he was in position, I figured the drama would ramp up as the female tried to grab him and hold him there until he did his job. She didn’t. Also, he only stayed in position very briefly (a second or so) before quickly skedaddling up onto the web again. He stopped a couple inches away and sat for a while.

Hmm…

Did he lose his nerve? Did something go wrong? I waited a few more minutes, and sure enough, he tried again. The same process occurred – he plucked the web, ran down onto her, got into position, and then quickly climbed back up again. She was making some movements with her legs in response to him approaching, but I didn’t know how to interpret those.

I ended up spending the better part of an hour watching the spiders. During that time, the male approached and left the female at least half a dozen times. From a photography standpoint, that was great because it gave me multiple chances to capture the action. It seemed odd, though.

When I got home, I looked closely at the photos I’d taken and did some online research. I have a hypothesis now. See what you think.

I read more about the risks of mating, from the male’s standpoint. Many of them are killed during the first attempt, but some (20%, according to one source) escape and try to find a second female to mate with. Usually, that second mating is their last, and there was some suggestion that the male will voluntarily succumb to the female after that second occasion.

One reason mating might be limited to two tries is that some male spiders actually break off a pedipalp inside the female’s genitalia – presumably as a way to block sperm from other males who might stop by after he leaves (or dies). Spiders only have two pedipalps, so after two mating attempts using that strategy, I guess there’s no point in continuing. Maybe that’s why the male often gives himself up to that second female. If nothing else, he’s ensuring she gets a good meal and is in better condition to raise his kids.

After reading all that, I went back to my photos and saw something that triggered my hypothesis. Look at this last photo of the male. Those pedipalps don’t look right to me. Male spiders should have bigger pedipalps than that.

Did this male already mate twice, losing a couple legs during his escape(s) and leaving the tips of both pedipalps behind? If so, instead of giving up, he apparently decided to live on, and maybe was driven by instinct to keep trying to mate (without the appropriate equipment to do so). That might explain his quick visits and retreats from the female.

If that’s true, I feel really bad for him. He worked up the nerve to approach a very dangerous female spider (maybe for the third time!), but when he arrived, he couldn’t actually do anything. That had to be confusing, and likely frustrating, depending upon how spiders experience emotions in situations like this. The poor little guy then just kept trying, each time hoping he’d have better luck.

Another possibility is that the male spider was born with deformed pedipalps. That would create an equally-sad scenario. Well, maybe even more sad because in the first scenario, at least the male got to mate a couple times. In the second, he didn’t even get that opportunity.

Long after the day got way too hot for my comfort, Kim finished her 25 mile run. Once she cooled off, I took her over to see the two spiders. They were still sitting two inches apart, which I figured meant the male was still making periodic (and fruitless?) approaches. They’d been there for more than three hours at that point.

I wonder how the story ended. Did the female eventually give up and just eat the poor guy? Did he eventually give up and wander off? Either way, it’s not a real heartwarming story, huh?

If one of my two hypotheses is right, I’m hoping it’s the first one – that he mated twice and then didn’t know when to stop. At least in that case, he’s got a decent chance of passing his genes onto a future generation.

Anyone have a better explanation for what I saw?