'Take Life Easy'

Reading and re-reading a lot of W. B. Yeats. This line from his early poem 'Down by the Sally Gardens' makes a good motto for the day: "She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs." Hiked to St Olaf Natural Lands at noon. An easy walk. Hopelessly behind on flowers and leaves and birds and insects, I have to let it all slide by, take some deep breaths and enjoy the day, come what may. A good samaritan has spent the morning (or last several mornings) pulling up a large patch of Garlic Mustard in the woods to the side of the trail. As I walked along I pulled out a few plants that had been missed.

Having encountered the first bluet damselfly yesterday, I thought it likely to find more today. No such luck. Dozens of Eastern Forktails, but no additional bluets...yet. Lots of sawflies on Virginia Waterleaf, Elder, and Highbush Cranberry. Photographed two jumping spiders.

A large, multi-legged thing moved on the gravel in front of me. Actually a combination of two distinct creatures, though bound by fate—a pitch-black spider wasp and a dark brown spider. The wasp succeeded in moving its prey across the open trail very quickly, then struggled in the short trailside grass, dropping the spider multiple times while doing its best to pull the spider over and under and through numerous obstacles. I watched patiently for some minutes. Eventually I lost sight of the wasp and its labors when it reached a thick stand of grass at the wood's edge.

Howard Ensign Evans in A Taxonomic Study of the Nearctic Spider Wasps Belonging to the Tribe Pompilini (1950), writes: "Of several genera of taxonomic importance, nothing whatever is known. The patient field observer may yet learn a wealth of facts about these wasps, and his efforts will be rewarded not only by the thanks of taxonomists and students of animal behavior, but by his acquaintance with the wasps themselves, for few insects are so fascinating in their activities as these intrepid hunters of spiders." I agree; there's little better than to take life easy and watch these hunters of spiders when you have the chance.

First Monarch! Chokecherry in blossom.

Posted on May 13, 2017 03:04 AM by