Walking across the lawn, going to the garden, is a simple trek that I have taken often. But this time, I glance down and see that along the route are many tiny toads. They seem to have appeared everywhere in the area recently.
As I enter the garden, I see these toadlets have hopped into this site as well. Watching them, I quickly note that the toads have cousins here too. On two of the rain barrels, used to gather water for the plants, are gray treefrogs. These two-inch critters live up to their name by climbing trees and also go on the rain barrels almost as though they are other trees. (We call them gray treefrogs, but in late summer, we are more likely to encounter their green phase.)
Looking again at the movement on the ground, I see another small frog — a chorus frog. Like the toads, this frog has just recently emerged from its aquatic home. (The timing was good since the pond mostly evaporated during the July heat.) And there is more happening in the garden today.
Not hopping, but running, are several wolf spiders. They would be hard to see in the grass, but easy to discern here. Some are carrying a ball-shaped structure on their tail ends — egg sacs.
These sacs are either brown or white and full of eggs. When hatching the young ride on the abdomen of the mother. With babies on her, she goes into hiding. They are not the only spiders present.
As I check the rain gauge, I bump into a web. Six feet above the ground and a diameter of about twenty inches, this circular orb web is quite large. Fortunately, I’m able to see the spider that made and is using this web; and it is also large. From the green-brown rounded body, I can tell that it is a spider called a giant lichen orbweaver.
Orbweavers are often big with a roundish abdomen. The name of lichen spider is due to the colors on its body. With the falling dusk, the eight-legged critter comes onto the snare and repairs it for another night of hunting. When not in the web, the spider sits on a nearby hiding site; often near the similar colored lichens on trees.
Not abundant, they are a regular resident in summer at the woods’ edge. Here they place a huge web in midsummer. Most orbweavers in the Northland — and we do have several kinds living here — spin their webs later in the summer.
From mid-August until the frosts of September is time to view these orbs, especially notable in the early morning dew. Webs will be placed in fields, roadsides, swamps and woods or as this one did, here in the garden.
A marvel to behold is watching the spider as she constructs or repairs the web at dusk. Despite the huge body (more than an inch) and size of the web, it is built quickly — in just a little more than half an hour. In the early morning, the web shows results of nocturnal hunts and, frequently, caught insects are wrapped while moths that escaped will leave scales from their wings.
Within a couple of hours at dawn, the webs are taken down (eaten) by the web maker herself. By doing this, she can avoid possible predators. Much of the protein in the web will be digested and put in future webs that she will make. I expect to see this spider in the garden again this summer — as well as wolf spiders, frogs and toads.
Retired teacher Larry Weber, a Barnum resident, is the author of several books.
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