Tarantula hawk wasp drags her hapless prey to her burrow.
I was running down a narrow trail at Ahmanson Ranch, concentrating on the irregular terrain, when I suddenly found myself jumping over something on the trail. As my consciousness caught up, it asked,
“Was that a tarantula?”
“What tarantula has a stripe of orange on its back?”
Landing, I stopped and looked back up the trail. Totally unperturbed, a female tarantula hawk wasp, its bright orange wings gleaming in the sun, was diligently working to move its paralyzed prey to a nearby burrow.
The quintessential elements of a nightmare, I watched as the large wasp assessed the huge spider. I could hear the question as she turned away from the spider, and then reading the ground with her feet and antennae, determined if she could drag the beast uphill over a small bump. Then, question answered, she proceeded to do so.
Back in March, a profusion of painted lady butterflies in Southern California made headlines. The colorful insects were said to be passing through the area on their way to Oregon and other points to the north.
Two months later millions of the black, orange and white butterflies continue to be seen in the West San Fernando Valley, Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve (Ahmanson Ranch), and other areas. Recently there has been an uptick in their numbers and there have been some remarkable displays of the flyers along local trails.
Painted lady in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve with the characteristic four eyespots on the hindwing. Click for a larger image.
There are three very similar species of “lady” butterflies in the genus Vanessa — the painted lady (Vanessa cardui), the American lady (Vanessa virginiensis) and the west coast lady (Vanessa annabella). The Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility web site has a side-by-side comparison of these species and this post on BugGuide.net compares the American lady to the painted lady.
The lady butterflies I’ve looked at closely in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve have the identifying characteristics of the painted lady (Vanessa cardui). Here are an open-wing photo and a closed-wing photo of painted lady butterflies in Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve.
Fanged and clawed, death waits, On a highland of lavender, near a saffron spire.
The silhouette of a crab spider on the petal of a back lit Purple nightshade (prob. Solanum xanti). The blossom is about 0.8 inch (~20 mm) wide, which would make the span of the spider’s crab-like grasping forelegs about 0.25 inch (~7 mm). From a run at Sage Ranch Park on November 2, 2006.