Observations Feb 28, 2023

Didn't get a lot of photos because I was tramping around in the woods behind the house without my camera for about an hour. It was sunny and 78F.

Despite the fact that there is no standing water, I saw two Fragile Forktails, Ischnura posita: 1 male and 1 female in the woods.
I also observed a beautiful Phidippus whitmani which are very common in our woods. They particularly seem to like the woods just beyond the back fence.

There was also a Anasaitis canosa (Twin-flagged Jumper) just off of one of the trails in the leaf litter. It was in the area where years ago there used to be a sphagnum moss bog. Past hurricanes blew out the ridges of dirt which had previously held in the water so it's been at least 10 years if not more since the bogs dried out (sadly). Anyway, that's the area the jumping spider was exploring. The last three years of drought around here also didn't help and really dried out our woods which used to be quite boggy with a lot of ephemeral puddles/ponds. Now it is pretty much all dry land back there.

Around 3PM I went to the ditch at the edge of our woods where there is still a trickle of water. There were 3 Fragile Forktails there: 2 females and one male. I did get some photos of the females and will (hopefully post those).

Some butterflies are also starting to appear. I saw a Gulf fritillary, Agraulis vanillae, at the overgrown side of the driveway where I saw them all last summer. The Epargyreus clarus, the silver-spotted skipper, is also fluttering around along the weedy ditches and fields and has been for at least a week now.

I didn't get photos of most of these but I wanted to record my sightings anyway, even without photographic evidence.

Publicado el 01 de marzo de 2023 por amypadgett