Trying for Lunch

THis is definitely worth a look in large.

I went to a park a fair way from home today. There is a lake there and I was hoping to get some dragonfly egg laying pictures. A pair of dragonflies flew past mating and so I followed them. They ran into a spiders web and the female got caught. I checked out the spider and even though it was a rather large St. Andrew's Cross I didn't think the web would be strong enough to hold a dragonfly and even then, didn't think it would attack.

It was fascinating to watch. The spider eventually went down and 'attacked'. It didn't try to bite the dragonfly, it VERY quickly wrapped up one of the pairs of wings and then made a hasty retreat. The dragonfly thrashed around for a while but still couldn't get free. After a while, the spider returned and moved in. It wrapped up the dragonfly's head and thorax and then retreated again. The dragonfly got busy and from what I could see through the lens, it was scraping off the web and eating it. In the end, its head was clean and so were its legs and feet but it was still trapped. The spider went down one other time while I was there but didn't try to do much except reinforce the part of the web that the dragonfly was hanging from.

After that, I think the spider knew its next few day's meals were safely locked up and the dragonfly couldn't escape so it went about repairing its web and then had a long rest.

I was there for an hour and a half watching. People would come and see what I was doing and were very appreciative of what I was observing.

This pic is of the first foray, when the spider was wrapping up the wings. Since Terri is staying at her mum's tonight, I wasn't able to decide which pic to post so that decision was made by my brother Brendon. Thanks Bren.