Favoritos de gljcrsmith

Here's some behavior I've been hoping to capture for a while! These Callobius pictus males had a quick dispute on one of the sheds in my yard. The shed is home to many C. pictus and C. severus spiders, especially the former right now.

The larger spider (left in the pictures) was crawling up along one of the corners while the smaller one was milling around higher up. The males seemed to notice one another from a distance of about 10 cm and they began moving in rather abrupt, jerky motions towards one another. When they were close enough, they stretched out their front legs out to the sides and made contact with the other spider's similarly extended legs. Then they came together and tussled for a bit, also grappling with their second pair of legs. The actual physical contact lasted only about 10 seconds. The smaller spider (right in the pictures) retreated and neither seemed any worse for wear.

The images of the dispute are in REVERSE chronological order. The individual close-ups are of the smaller spider on the right following the encounter.

I've seen similar behaviour in C. severus before, although the severus duel I photographed was lengthier with multiple scuffles:

https://bugguide.net/node/view/795954/bgimage

I found a black widow under a log the other day. I offered her a cup of coffee and asked her how she liked her insects, but she just gave me a venomous stare and scurried away. I guess she wasn't in the mood for small talk

Found on the ground on hiking trail. Looking a little beat up. We picked it up to get a better look and noticed some tail feathers missing on the one side. We held it a while as we continued our walk along the trail and gave it a little water. What we where not expecting was she was starting to lay an egg. The other pictures show it. The egg came out broken yoke first then the shell. Only minute after the ordeal she had enough strength and flew off. She was still bulging on the bottom and appeared to have more eggs to lay.

110 km southerly range extension for the Karoo region. As far as I can find out, the closest known record in the general area is from Karoo National Park, having been collected by Werner Conradie. Ex. Psammophis trinasalis

Out and alive and basking on New Year’s Day!
I encouraged the snake to move to the edge of the pavement for safety…oh my!! As it got to the edge of the pavement, something large in my peripheral vision from sunward was coming in…a red tail hawk swooping for the snake and then noticing me. It aborted the attack and landed on a branch nearby. I was going to pick the snake up and move it to a thicket nearby, but it squirmed into the grass and hid itself well enough. Now, a waiting game. Who would leave first, the hawk or me. 15 minutes later, the hawk gave up. Hopefully the snake slithered off to his hibernaculum safely. 😊

A member of the nominate and northern most subspecies. Characterized by broad white supercillium and thinner, lighter ventral streaking (compared to the more southern breeders). Largely resident from Alaska east through central Canada, into northern Quebec, the Maritimes, and the eastern US. South to the southwestern US (up to southern Arizona). I found this immature individual after it had captured a grey partridge (better seen in the second photo, looks to be still alive). I didn't want to scare it off a potential kill so I didn't stick around to see the fate of the partridge.