Oh dear...

I am afraid I didn't factor in the jumping spiders when I accepted Team Spider's jumping team.  While they are, indeed, excellent jumpers, they show an alarming propensity to eat anything that flies...or crawls.  This could spell trouble for some of our athletes in the upcoming AOG...

Met up with my naturalist group - only nine of us intrepid enough to venture out in today's heat.  In spite of sweltering temps and ticks all over the place, we had a very successful outing with lots of butterflies and insects.  And because you know I can almost never pass up a good predation shot, today's blip was in the bag when I spotted this fairly good sized brown jumping spider devouring some sort of small wasp or fly.  He was inches away from a juvenile praying mantis who was also busy eating flying things.  

I posted five pics on Flickr, starting here with the praying mantis kid.

Going to be another scorcher tomorrow.  I'm headed out very early to meet up with a couple of fellow Audubon members to drive to the Jersey shore for a birding event.  Although the area we are going to has biting green flies in large numbers right now, there are also some good migrating shorebirds, so we're going to fend off the biters and hope for the best.  Be fun to see some terns and gulls and shore birds again!

Counting down to the AOG ... two weeks from today!  Get your athletes ready, people!

Debbi