In the picture below, the white crab spider is eyeing this bee that has been feeding on this flower. In this case, the bee did not approach closely enough to be caught. 

However, not all are so lucky. This fall, I watched, as a crab spider grabbed a bumblebee that was substantially larger than the spider itself. The ensuing struggle was brief:

Crab spider catching a bumblebee

The bee twitched for about 15 to 30 seconds, while the pair hung suspended from a single strand of silk that the spider had released through its spinneret: Note how it is using a rear leg to position itself with the silk. The single strand was strong enough to hold the weight of both hunter and prey.

Crab spider and bumblebee suspended by a strand of silk

Within a minute, the spider had pulled its prey back up under the leaf, where the digestive process and subsequent consumption could take place:

Returned to the leaf to eat

This final step in the drama may take a day or more, and eventually the shrunken exoskeleton is dropped and the spider goes on to continue a new hunt.

The northern saw-whet owl is the smallest owl in this part of the country, a little smaller than the eastern screen owl, measuring about 8 inches in length, and weighing 2.5 to 4 ounces, give or take (females generally larger than males). Unlike our other local owls, this one is migratory: most of them spend the summer and nesting season further north: all the way up into the boreal forests of Canada. Numerous banding stations across the country have provided valuable information into the migratory patterns, distances traveled, etc.

Most of the owls captured for banding are females: presumably related to the irresistible calling of a male on tape. After about an hour discussing the owl, and what goes on at Drumlin Farm, other volunteers brought a relatively large female that had been found in the net during the first inspection. 

After freeing the owl from the net, it was brought in for weighing, measuring, sexing, aging, and banding:

Once indoors the owl was alert, but not agitated:

Note the positioning of the talons, which can either be positioned three on one or two and two, depending upon whether the bird is perching or picking up prey.

As a group, we followed the bankers out to release this first owl, followed by a trek into the woods to see the nets, where we found a second owl. This one was somewhat smaller than the first and had already been banded on a previous evening:

You can get a sense of the small size of these owls, vis a vis the bankers hand:

Second owl, up close, just prior to release:

The katydid was essentially immobile, hanging from its old skeleton. Katydids, and all other orthopterans, have an external skeleton. As they grow, at several time points, that exoskeleton splits, and the larger insect emerges: Over the space of a hours, the helpless insect hardens its new exoskeleton that it will grow into. In the picture above, note the soft, poorly expanded wings on the green katydid. Its legs are hanging onto its former skeleton as it hangs suspended. If you look closely at that exoskeleton, you can see the two eyes at the center of the brown structure, and the remnants of the two antennae (brown as opposed to free).

Another view, staring right into the face of the now emerged katydid, along with a look at the face of its former self.

This emerging katydid was a female: note the red structure emerging from the rear of the insect. This is the ovipositor, which she will use to lay eggs, that can then survive the winter and provide the start for a new generation.

This whole process went on for more than three hours - at least - since I am not sure how long this had been going on before I found this. When I went out to check it periodically, I noticed that the emerged katydid was beginning to become somewhat more active, and it was starting to eat the exoskeleton that it had just shed. In the picture below, she is beginning to eat her way through the legs...

And after three hours, the process of recycling the exoskeleton was virtually complete, except for two residual pieces of the legs. 

And an hour later, four hours after I found her, she was sitting and moving actively atop another flower. 

There were at least eight different species of hummingbirds. Of these, the tufted coquette was by far the smallest (and among the smallest in the world), and in many ways the most beautiful. These gems are approximately 6 to 7 cm long (2.5 inches), and weigh less than between 2 and 3 grams (1/10 of an ounce).

The tufted coquette were almost constantly in motion, moving from one flower to the next, with a strong preference for the verbena that was planted on the grounds. Spending just a few seconds per flower, it was almost impossible to capture them in flight. 

The male was significantly more ornate than the female, with its orange crest, orange bill with a black tip, and amazing orange feathers coming out of both sides of the neck. Each of these seemed to have a circular black dot on its end:

Tufted coquette, male

Eventually they would perch for ten to fifteen seconds, and when they did they would generally pick the highest open branch on the bush, eventually returning to the same site (and giving me the opportunity to get a really close look):

In contrast, the female was somewhat plainer, lacking both the crest and featers protruding to the sides of the neck:

The white band across the back was present in both the male and female, and reminds me of the "hummingbird moths" that we have in New England (and elsewhere), which are almost the same size, and have a very very similar behavior pattern of going from one flower to the next:

Hummingbird moth

On walking back up from digging out the mailbox, I found the remains of a dead animal in the driveway, evidence of a kill from an owl. I have seen this once before after a heavy snowstorm. About ten years ago, I found remains of a dead rabbit in the snow, with wing marks suggestive of a great horned owl strike. This time I initially thought that the villain was the screech owl I had seen yesterday, particularly since it ate only part of the head.

And then dragged the remains of the rabbit about 100 feet along the drive, probably never becoming airborne. [There was fur scattered along the driveway, to where it eventually dropped the carcass.]

Additional photos from the storm, and on the demise of rabbit on : http://michaelross.zenfolio.com/p866271091 

However, I was wrong about the culprit: it was a barred owl, a species that I had not previously seen in the yard. On the evening of the 10th, I was driving up the driveway after dark. Headlights of the car picked up a barred owl, sitting on the snowbank where the carcass of the rabbit had been. We looked each other in the eye, before I drove back to the house, hoping that he would sit still until I fetched the camera. Alas, no such luck - when I returned a couple minutes later he was gone.

On the islands, great blues, anhingas, and numerous other species nest in large colonies. We had brought our son and his oldest daughter to see the baby great blue heron nest that was very near the first gazebo, and which afforded excellent views of the approximately one week old babies.

After watching for a while, we walked the boardwalk circuit, to see whatever else there was of interest. On the far side, my son called my attention to a great blue approximately 15 to 20 feet from the boardwalk with a large mammal in its mouth. In the ensuing five minutes or so, I took approximately 80 pictures of the drama that unfolded, with a heron having captured this large rodent that had two babies still clinging to its nipples. The mother muskrat was dead - I suspect that the heron had either crushed its neck or broken the neck with its bill, but the young were still kicking.

Initial attempts involved repositioning the heron with the goal of allowing it to be swallowed. This included dipping dinner into the water, manipulating it with the bill and trying over and over. We were concerned that given the size of the prey, this would either be impossible, or that the heron would choke to death in the process. Jokingly, we suggested that our son (a gastroenterologist) might have to come to the rescue to remove this foreign body. However, eventually, the muskrat was oriented for its head first slide into the mouth and neck, and down it went. 

As we watched, we were uncertain regarding what was being eaten. My initial reaction was muskrat - based upon shape, fur, etc. However, as I thought about it, this was too small for muskrat, at least what I am used to seeing in New England. I thought about other rodents, various species of southern rats, etc. After the fact searching on the web, revealed this to be a round tailed muskrat (Neofiber alleni), which is not only common in the Florida swamps but relatively abundant. According to one web source there may be as many as 50 or more per acre.

The reaction to these pictures has been mixed: some horror at the cruelty of nature, as the heron killed the mother muskrat and devoured her and her babies, yet there is also a fascination that if we are going to enjoy and welcome the beauty of the herons, the baby herons must be fed... And it takes a lot of food to support the herons, egrets, etc. "It's a jungle out there".

Additional photos from this event at: http://michaelross.zenfolio.com/p825533235

Other pictures from Wakodahatchee and nearby Loxahatchee and Green Cay at: http://michaelross.zenfolio.com/f625047364

Once I was aware of that, I quickly came to realize that they were present in relatively large numbers throughout the yard and neighborhood, on a variety of flowers, and that they had a distinctive shape and behavior patterns. They would sit patiently, in one flower, in virtually the same location, all day - day after day, waiting for a meal to arrive. The two front pairs of legs widely spread, reading to grasp on to anything that came within their reach:

[in hydrangea]

[up close]

[in magnolia]

Their hunting technique was relatively straightforward: simply sit still until the prey approached, then lurch forward, quickly grasp, and inject a toxin that almost immediately paralyzed the victim. Digestive enzymes are injected. After a while, that digested juices of the victim and ingested and the hard exoskeleton of the arthropod prey is discarded, and the process repeats itself.

Interestingly, prey is generally large relative to the female crab spiders. The female has a body that is less than one centimeter (quarter of an inch or so) across, although the spider seems much larger with her arms extended as she awaits the opportunity to pounce, with a "wing span" of 2 to 3 cm (one inch).

[bumble bee on the menu]

[waspp]

[different species of crab spider, not white, eating an earwig that it had captured]

In addition, the crab spiders seem to sometimes share hunting, and the subsequent meal, with ambush bugs, which have a very similar hunting pattern, and will often be seen in the same flower as the crab spider - although i have never seen the spider eating or attacking the ambush bug.

[crab spider, upper left, eating from the fly at the junction between the thorax and abdomen. 

ambush bug, beneath it, sucking out the abdominal contents]

The males are much smaller: with bodies just a few millimeters across. Although I have occasionally spotted them, i see them much less commonly. Following is a male mating with a female on what i presume is her nest:

[note the darker legs of the much smaller male, protruding from beneath the abdomen]

Taking a lot of digital pictures, I find that sometimes I see things (and hopefully learn) far more than I originally intended. At times this has taken the form of seeing things that I otherwise would have missed simply because they were too small. At other times, these observations occur because of the limited time that I would have while I was there. These serendipitous findings have something become obvious as soon as I put the pictures up on the computer. At other times, I have not realized this until long after the fact - even years.

When we returned from Borneo, I was particularly proud of this picture of a red stick insect that a guide had found by the side of the trail in Borneo. I included it in a slide show that I shared with family members:

I was immediately called to task by my keen eyed son, who pointed out that I had photographed two stick insects, the red male and a significantly larger brown female, with the two mating. At that point it became obvious to me, as I could match up the anatomic parts of the two, then identifying the six legs and antennae of the brown female.

Serendipidity has come in a variety of forms:

We were in South Africa in the summer of 2005, and near the end of the trip visited a penguin colony not too far from Capetown. I photographed numerous penguins. Several years later I was re processing the pictures that I had taken there, when I noticed that in one immature penguin, there were several ticks along the base of the bill.

Ticks are not the only insects that prey on much larger animals. Mosquitoes, which we have all come to hate, both as an annoyance and as a vector of disease, also can afflict other creatures. I have come to realize that even amphibians and reptiles can be annoyed similarly. Whether or not they are disease victims is uncertain to me:

Note the mosquito on the tip of this female snapping turtles nose, as well as at least two more in the lower right hand corner of the picture, along the side of the jaw. 

Bull frog, Great Meadows NWR, note the two small mosquitoes along the thing of rear leg, and another along frog's flank.

Even insects can fall prey to smaller insects. I have taken a lot of pictures of flies, grasshoppers, spiders, etc. Surprises are not unheard of even in that realm. Look at the head of this Borneo millipede (total length 10 -15 cm - 4 to 6 inches).

All along his dorsal surface, these tiny flies were congregating. (see entire millipede at http://michaelross.zenfolio.com/p990515880/h4ebfe296#h4ebfe296)

In our front yard, I have tried to get a closer look at creatures such as crane flies: I somehow positioned the macro lens to get a view of the underside of this crane fly. Note the orange mites with which it is infected:

I often feel that if I can come away with at least one "good" picture, the day is a success. On this trip success came early. This immature red tailed hawk was hovering in the wind right over the road, and I was able to pull within 25 to 50 feet of the bird, which seemed to be anchored like a kite without flapping. Eventually the wind carried him north, while I was pointed south along the road, but i have the chance to get this and several other nice shots.

Among the ducks, I saw significant numbers of American wigeon, pintails, black ducks, mallard, bufflehead, red breasted mergansers, and common eider, possibly also gadwall. Of particular interest was the following male, a hybrid between a mallard and a black duck. Note the green along the back of his head. 

Mallards and black ducks are closely related, and hybrids are quite frequent at areas where their breeding range intersects. The black duck is the more northerly of the two. 

Also fun to watch the gulls and the sandpipers of various sorts along the ocean front. Flocks of sandpipers moving in and out with each wave, essentially all moving in the same direction at the same time.

The gulls were feeding on mollusks: picking up a large shell, flying up in the air, dropping it onto the rocks or sand, and repeating this maneuver over and over until the shell cracked.

Other photos from this trip http://michaelross.zenfolio.com/p907024106 

I eventually was able  to approach the snake face to face with the macro lens, and that generally did not bother him/her:

Additional photos http://michaelross.zenfolio.com/p524758637