At the end of August, a Green Lynx spider took up residence on one of the zinnia blooms. She’s been there every day since and I’ve been watching her every day. Here she is dining on a lady beetle.
Ms. Lynx began growing and getting pretty fat. Then on September 15 I found she had produced what I figured was an egg sac. She was pretty protective of it. And not as fat!
The hot weather kept building and on Sep 25th, when it hit a short streak of 100 degree highs, Ms. Lynx was smart and moved her egg sac to the shade under the flower.
I guess there wasn’t enough shade since it was facing the sun and by that afternoon she had moved it to the other side of the flower base where it got more shade.
Yesterday I noticed that there was some kind of cottony webbing around the sac and there were also a few tiny little orange things. Babies! Ms. Green Lynx herself has also changed color as her abdomen is no longer bright emerald green and her thorax, although still green, is a darker shade. Her legs have developed reddish spots or maybe the beginnings of stripes. Curious about that, I read where the females will change color during the egg laying process over a 16 day period.
This morning there’s a bunch of little ones and they’re just enough bigger that it’s easy to see legs now.
That's quite a brood! I wonder how many will survive. Wikipedia says they hunt both bad bugs (including cabbage loopers and other moths) but also beneficials, including honey bees. Like anything else in life, there are two sides to each coin. Meanwhile, I'll keep checking on this family every day.