Nursery Web Spider at Springbrook

 At Springbrook's Pumpkin Night Halloween Program last Saturday we had some pretty big pretend spiders.  On Monday, as we cleaned the props after bringing them inside, this very large REAL spider jumped off a fake spider and ran across the floor. 

This Nursery Web Spider, I think Dolomedes tenebrosus, has a leg span of about 3 inches, and moves faster than most of the nature center staff are comfortable with.

This is a female, and with little left to eat outside, and cold weather coming, will be lucky to find a warm place to stay with food to eat.

I photographed her on a wild sunflower seed head.

Look at the close up of the eyes in the pictures below.

Those are her fangs covered by hair hanging down below her 8 eyes. I would not want to be a small bug trying to escape from her.



 Nursery Web Spiders have very good eyesight, and chase their prey down.  Many can also run across water.








But they do have a serious problem with eyelashes, as can be seen in the picture below.  But maybe I just found her on a bad hair day.

3rd Oldest Hairy Woodpecker is at Springbrook

 At our regular bird banding activity at Springbrook Nature Center today we captured this female Hairy Woodpecker.  We first captured her in October of 1998 as a hatch year bird.  That makes her 14 years and some months old.  If the Bird Banding Lab decides that she is at least 4 months plus 14 years old, she will be the 3rd oldest Hairy Woodpecker ever recorded.

 She looked full of energy and bright eyed as we weighed and measured her today.  These pictures are courtesy of Amber Burnette, who was photographing while I was holding the bird and taking measurements. 

Her band was very worn and thin as can be seen in this picture and the picture below. A new band is next to her band below.

Woodpeckers often wear their bands quite thin as the band rubs against the bark of trees while the woodpecker moves up and down searching for food.  But this band was knife edge sharp on the top edge, and exceptionally thin, so we took the band off and replaced it with a new one. 

We have captured her 25 times in the last 14 years.  Let's hope we catch her for a few more years and set a record for the oldest Hairy Woodpecker ever recorded.

Bull Snake in September

 A local business discovered this Bull Snake in their parking lot today and called police, who promptly brought it to Springbrook for us to determine what to do with it. 

Bull Snakes are Minnesota's largest native snake, and used to be common around Springbrook.  Development has made most disappear, but this one was healthy and large at 60 inches long.

 The area where it was found is fully developed and the chances of another encounter with people very high.  The next encounter might not turn out so well for the snake, so I took it to Springbrook's south prairie and released it there.  There are lots of gophers there for it to eat, and other bull snakes.

Bull Snakes are often called Gopher Snakes because of their habit of eating pocket gophers.  Their nose is more pointed than most snakes to help push into gopher mounds and then down into their tunnels.

Bull Snakes are constricters, and find their prey mostly by smell.  Their tongue is forked as this picture shows.  With the tougue shaped like this, the snake can determine which direction, right or left, smells best, for safety or food.  The snake is constantly smelling with its tongue to re-evaluate its options and make decisions as it moves through its world.

They are excellant at rodent control, so I hope this one can find a good place to overwinter, and then finds Springbrook to be a good home.

First Fall Heavy Frost

 Last Sunday morning was the first heavy fall frost at Springbrook.  The Virginia Creeper leaves in this picture were covered with crystals of ice. 
In the pictures below there is the pale blue Prairie Aster before and immediately after the rising sun touched it.  The second picture is what I call dew-frost.  Not quite totally thawed but no longer all frost either.
The other two pictures are the tiny hairs on a grass seed head with delicate crystals of frost, and last the heavy edge frost crystals on an aspen leaf.  Fall is here!

Otters at Springbrook

 There has been a family of otters at Springbrook for a few weeks.  A mother and two nearly grown young.  I was able to take these pictures at sunrise with the sun right behind them, so the lighting is bad.  This is the only time I have seen them close, and they disappeared right after I took these pictures.

Several visitors have seen them playing and catching fish close to the boardwalks.  You just have to be in the right place at the right time.

The two young ones are in front here with the larger mother behind.

Transparent Dragonflies, Spiderwebs and Dew

 It is late summer at Springbrook and at sunrise spiderwebs covered with dew drops were everywhere when I took these pictures two days ago. With the sun behind them the dragonflies are transparent and seem empty as can be seen below, waiting to warm up and start catching todays food.
The jewelweed at sunrise is covered with jewel-like dew drops, until the yellow jacket wasp sneaks in and eats the night's nector, knocking off the dew drops as she leaves.  She can just be seen here at the bottom of the flower.

Eastern Tailed Blue-A Tiny Butterfly

 Eastern Tailed Blue butterflies are fairly common at Springbrook Nature Center, but not easy to see.  With its wings folded, the butterfly is smaller than a US nickel (5cent) coin.  They fly quickly and often are only a flash of blue in the air and then gone.

With wings folded, the male and female look identical, as can be seen with this mating pair.  I took this picture last fall in Springbrook's west prairie.

The top wing color is quite different between males and females, as can be seen in these next two pictures.

This is the female to the left.  I took this picture shortly after sunrise two days ago in the south prairie.  It is rare to see them with their wings open like this.  She was trying to warm up and had her wings facing directly at the sun.  The females are supposed to be drab, but her colors seemed quite vivid to me.

The male has the blue color that flashes as he flies.  I took this picture in the south prairie in the spring as it was feeding on this wild strawberry flower.

These tiny but pretty butterflies are almost always around on any hike at Springbrook during the summer.  But you have to be looking for them, or they will flash past you and into the tree tops unseen.