Spider In The Pocket

On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau observed "A willow coming out fairly, with honey-bees humming on it, in a warm nook,---the most forward I have noticed, for the cold weather has held them in check. And now different kinds of bees and flies about them. What a sunny sight and summer sound!"

Here in Northfield, half a continent west of Concord, Massachusetts, and more than a century and a half on, the surprise is that the year progresses in so like a manner as Thoreau's. Unfortunately no similar, early records exist for this part of Minnesota. No baseline inventory of species. No detailed phenological data. The best we can do is begin to assemble that information. Recently Richard Primack set about collecting data for comparison to Thoreau's data. He summarized his findings in the book Walden Warming. The ice on Walden Pond goes out earlier, wildflowers bloom earlier, migrant insects and birds arrive earlier. Everything seems to happen earlier than in Thoreau's day. The change in climate is indisputable.

Contrariwise, the cold continues to hold the willows and early native bees in check (even while it loses ground in the long run). Today is just as overcast, though not quite as rainy, and slightly colder. So I was happy to have a spider to photograph. Yesterday, while at the St Olaf Natural Lands, I looked over some recently cut down trees in one of the road ditches. Under a loose piece of bark I discovered a spider inside a loose web. I collected it in a vial, put it in my pocket and brought it home to photograph. The arrangement of eyes and the tubular spinnerets put it in the superfamily Gnaphosoidea, the Ground Spiders.

Posted on 21 de abril de 2017, 03:43 AM by scottking