Dewby Dewby Dew

I woke up in the wee small hours this morning, before dawn, but close enough to it that it wasn't completely dark outside, and in looking out the window I could see that it was foggy. What that meant later was lots, and lots, and lots of dew. I swear that when I went for my morning walk I could hear a thousand spiders waking up and saying, "I hate dew." But those pictures will be toward the end of the blog. In the meantime...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 I don't know what it is. It's very small. Wasp or fly of some kind.

Random Bugs, From Morning and Evening Bug Walks:

 There are a lot of these moths flying around, flitting around in the grass. I guess now there will be more, if these two have anything to say about it.

Fly

 Hoverfly

 Milkweed tussock moth caterpillar on the move...

Sigh. Swallowtail of some kind...

Small milkweed bug in a milkweed pod...

 Small milkweed bugs on phlox...

 Earwig

Okay, about the spiders and the dew...

If you are afraid of spiders to the point that spiderwebs freak you out, you should go now. If you are only afraid of spiders themselves, those will again be at the end of the blog, with the usual buffer, so you can look at this next part to just see what the yard looked like this morning. But I will say that a couple of the spider pictures are pretty alarming, so if you are only mildly afraid of spiders, you may want to skip the spiders today.

What I found out this morning, thanks to the heavy dew, was that there are a LOT more spiders in my backyard than I ever realized. And I was able to see all of their webs because they were covered in dew.

 I didn't see a lot of orb webs...

But I saw a lot of other kinds of webs. This one is just a huge confusion of silk...

 Bowl and doily web

 Web on the grass

 Funnel web that has tracks of something all through the dew.

So many webs on the grass...

 And on leaves...

 And the garden fence...

 More on the grass

 And more...

 Something between the petals of a flower...

 So many webs on the grass! These must be there all the time and I just don't see them.

 This part of the front yard must have had fifty webs in a space about 10 feet by 10 feet.

And now... Arachnid Appreciation:

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 Goldenrod crab spider

I have posted a couple of pictures recently of a funnel web spider with a web in the crotch of a cedar tree. Today I checked on it and it looked like it had something inside with it...

 Here's the above picture zoomed in. That looks like another spider in there. Prey, or mating partner? And I wonder what that blob of liquid is...

Later in the day I looked again...

 Here's THAT picture zoomed in - it looks like the tables have turned!

 Handsome jumping spider - this might be a new one for me.

 Flower crab spider