Still catching up…
Saturday afternoon I spent some time “down back” at the beaver-made wetland (a large wet meadow and small pond) on our property.
I was expecting to find Hudsonian Whitefaces back at the water to mate. They had been present up near the house for a couple of weeks but the numbers have fallen off in the past ten days or so.
Also present were the first four-spotted skimmers of the year and a few female chalk-fronted corporals. I saw, but did not photograph, a single damselfly… a sprite, probably a sedge sprite.
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Were that spider and the chalk-fronted corporal peacefully coexisting? Maybe each was too big to be eaten by the other?
Comment by Katrina — 10 June 2014 @ 2:59 PM
As far as I could tell, your surmise is correct. The dragonfly kept moving off on hunting forays and returning to the same perch. Thus, it was clearly unperturbed by or unaware of the spider. The spider did move about a bit on the underside of the perch but did not seem to make any aggressive moves towards the dragonfly.
I think that this is one of those spiders that ambushes its prey rather than using a web, so your “too big” idea may well be correct. I have seen large and half-eaten dragonflies in spider webs, so at least some spiders find them tasty!
Comment by Frank — 10 June 2014 @ 10:07 PM