Albert Burchsted's Blog

Posted by Albert Burchsted

Typical spiders sit on their webs waiting for prey to become entangled, and inject the prey with venom to kill the prey and enzymes to digest the animal. Because they cannot chew, after capture, the spider waits for the prey to become digested, then drink the digested product. Although most spiders follow this doctrine – there are some exceptional species.

Prey Crushers

Uloborid spiders have secondarily lost their poison glands. These spiders wrap their living prey in silk and use the silk coffin to smother and sometimes crush the prey to death.

Bola Swinging Spiders

The bola spiders do not spin the same type of web that other spiders do. Its web is small and horizontal to the ground. The spider feeds at night by standing on the lower surface of its web, spinning a thickened strand of silk with a large sticky glob on the end. It lets this strand hang down from the web. As insects fly by, the spider swings the silk strand at them. When the sticky ball strikes an insect, the spider drops onto the prey, bites, and wraps it.

Trap Door Spiders

Many spiders dig moderately deep holes in the ground, lining them with silk for ease in moving up and down the hole, and spinning a cover to which they attach sticks and small stones as camouflage. The cover fits the top of the hole perfectly, sealing it against water, dust, and other atmospheric intrusions.

When hunting, the trap door spider waits at the top of its tube with the trap door slightly open. If a prey organism wanders close enough, the spider rushes out of its tube, bites the prey, and carries it back into the tube to eat it.

The trap door spiders of Australia (**) are serious concerns to humans as the males wander far and wide to find females. In their wanderings, they will attack and bite unwary humans – often chasing them for some distance to bite them. Their venom is quite toxic and capable of killing a human.

Mother Eaters

Female Stegodyphus spiders invest more heavily in their offspring than most other spiders. These females spin a normal cocoon for the eggs and stay by them throughout the entire period the spiderlings are developing. When the spiders hatch, the regurgitates food to feed them. When they are ready to leave, her babies crawl over her, and they kill and eatonsume her. In this way, she ensures they have a more substantial headstart in life than most spiderlings do. Male infanticide.

Some Spiders Alter The Web After Eating

The widow spiders build rather messy webs consisting of criss-crossed fibers in a three-dimensional tangle. But the web has one shape when the spider is hunting prey and a second when it has recently eaten.

Spiders That do not Spin Webs

Several kinds of spiders spin silk only to assist in moving from place to place, to keep them from falling if they slip off a perch, to wrap up their prey, or to protect their eggs. These have many different modes of feeding and getting around.

Jumping Spiders

Jumping spiders are small to medium sized spiders that spin silk only when they jump to capture prey, from location to location, or to protect their eggs in a cocoon. These spiders have their eyes arranged on the front of their heads and two eyes are much larger than the other six. These large eyes provide the spider with excellent binocular vision so they can judge distance and have a good picture of the world around them.

When one sees a likely prey animal, it creeps along until it is in range, then jumps onto the prey, biting it and injecting poison and enzymes, but does not wrap it in silk. When the prey dies, the jumping spider feeds in the normal fashison.

Hunting Spiders

Wolf and lynx spiders, and a few others also do not spin webs, but they do use silk as a lifeline when they capture prey, move from location to location, and protect their eggs. Tarantulas spin very little silk and their spinnerets are reduced in number and kind when compared with other spiders. Their silk spinning is mostly associated with protecting eggs.

Wolf spiders and tarantulas are mostly terrestrial, wandering across the ground and under vegetation hunting for prey. When found, these spiders rush their prey and overcome it through the surprise of their attack and often because the spider is larger than its prey. Female wolf spiders grasp the egg cocoon and carry their eggs around with them wherever they go. In the fall, it is not unusual to find a wolf spider carrying an egg sac that is larger than her abdomen.

Lynx spiders behave in much the same manner, but crawl through vegetation looking for their prey. These spiders do spin cocoons to hold their prey until it is ready to eat as well as to protect their eggs. They, like the jumping spiders, spin lifelines when they jump off plants.

Crab Spiders

A large group of spiders hunts in both vegetation and flowers. These generally have a flattened body with long legs that extend laterally from the spider's side. These spiders are called crab spiders because they often move sideways like a crab. They can change color to match the plant part they are sitting on. If a crab spider is sitting on goldenrod flowers it will be yellow, on peas or clover it will be pink, white or blue on asters, and green on leaves.

Their mode of hunting is to sit almost invisibly on the plant and bite whatever insects come into range. Like jumping spiders, they do not encase the prey in silk.

Posted by Albert Burchsted

The groups of birds that can be found in Southwest Florida during the spring are listed below. Those that are described in this guide are highlighted in blue.

Loons and Grebes

Pelicans, Anhingas, Cormorants

Herons and Egrets

Storks and Wading Birds

Shore Birds

Raptors and Vultures

Gallinules, Quail, and Turkeys

Parrots and Doves

Woodpeckers and Kingfishers

Flycatchers and Kingbirds

Hummingbirds, Swifts, Swallows

Crows and Jays

Warblers

Chickadees, Titmice, and Nuthatches

Thrushes, Mimids

Sparrows

Birds of European Origin

Posted by Albert Burchsted

Honey bees are succumbing to mites, moths, beetles, fungal attacks, and a new condition called colony collapse disorder, CCD. Beekeepers are now making dire predictions that failure of the bee industry, will result in an inability of almost ninety plant crops to be pollinated and produce fruits, and the possible collapse of our present methods of food production.

This is not just a case of Agribusiness crying out for a new insecticide to reduce crop damages. The loss of the honeybee could destroy many of our most important crops: including many fruits, nuts, and vegetables. By far, the two most important threats to bees are the varroa mite and CCD. The mite is known and can be fought off. CCD as yet has no known cause, and once the signs of it become evident, the hive is probably going to fail.

Neither varroa mites nor CCD appear to be major problems for organic farmers, however. This leads us to believe that the crowding of hives in areas where pollinators are needed and the use of pesticides, genetically engineered crops, and viruses may be prime suspects in both the mite and the CCD problem.

Organic farming methods have been demonstrated to produce foods with greater amounts of both micronutrients and macronutrients and less environmental insult in the way of pesticides and fertilizers than standard Agribusiness methods do. But some organic farming methods produce foods that have "natural" but highly toxic insecticides, have no better nutrients than Agrobusiness foods, and are not as beneficial to the environment as the term "organic" implies.