Here is a crab spider for this #spiderday
Here is a flower crab spider from the genus Mecaphesa.
They wait inside flowers hoping for bees or flies to come by, then suddenly they pounce on them.
I tried waiting for some spider attacking bee action but this flower was quite stinky and the mosquitoes started biting. So I ended up leaving it to wait endlessly for food.
The next day I came back looking for it in the same flower but it had moved a short distance to some prairie plants. Maybe the stinky flower was a bad hunting area.
I wonder what sort of luck it will have in this spot. Maybe it will catch a dragonfly in this area...
Now for some tiny little jumpers.
I suspect this one might be Platycryptus undatus. Very tiny and quite jumpy. I was lucky to barely focus in on this one before it leapt away into oblivion.
Here is another super tiny jumper that I think is Tutelina elegans. It has a shiny metallic gold body with a bit of purple shine on its bum. I tried getting a shot of its face but again it leapt away into the milkweeds. These guys are so tiny they can only hunt ants or aphids.
I am not exactly sure which type of jumper this is. If I had to guess it might be a juvenile bold jumping spider. It was the largest of the three and its coloring kind of resembles a juvenile daring jumping spider Phiddipus audax. They all seem to be happy hunting ants and aphids in the milkweed ecosystem.
That's all for now, more spiders soon and thanks for looking :-)
