spiders

There are four (4) orb-weaver spiders in the tree outside my kitchen window. I watched them this morning. Two of them were repairing their webs, less than two feet from each other and completely unaware of their neighbors. I wonder if there will be enough insects in the area to feed all of them. I wonder how these spiders get so big in the first place. I’ve never seen a baby orb-weaver. Could a baby orb-weaver even build a web? How do they eat enough to get big enough to build one?

I learned today that many orb-weaver species will eat their web and rebuild it each day. This is why it is so rare to see any corpses in the threads.

Watching those little gals crawl around their nearly invisible traps, swaying in the lightest breeze, they seemed so fragile to me. Any moment something could come crashing through and destroy all their hard work. A bird could pluck them up, a hard rain could wash them away. But they just keep on living and doing their thing. What else can they, or any of us do.

UPDATE: I checked on the spiders this afternoon because there were some landscapers cleaning up with leaf blowers and I wondered if they were still there.

They were there, and it turns out there was a fifth spider I hadn’t noticed before. Two of the spiders were having meals.

Not so fragile after all?