(This post originally published in September 2010)
Another delightful morning in the prairie meadow yesterday. With our recent cold front moving through, the morning temperature was in the high 40’s (°F), but the sky was basically clear with only a few scattered high clouds. When I reached the meadow, I was pleasantly surprised that there was a heavy dew over the area. As I walked about the meadow, I was seeing a lot of small critters that were “frozen in time” and covered with dewdrops. I’m sure they were wondering if it was raining! Here are a few of the images I made.
These first two images are butterflies covered with dew, but I was unable to make a quick identification of the species:
I then came upon a very large Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) that was clinging to his web. Twice while I was photographing it, a small hairstreak butterfly flew into the web but both were lucky enough to struggle free before the spider could venture over and encase it:
And while I was photographing this spider, I turned around to see this Black Swallowtail (Papilio bairdii) clinging to a plant, with dewdrops all over it:
Also, lots of dewdrops on the wildflowers and the foliage plants this morning … an awesome sight in the prairie meadow … kind of like a miniature Ice Kingdom!
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