Yellow Whitebanded Crab Spider - June 28, 2009

Here is a very large yellow spider in our garden. We are pretty sure it is a whitebanded crab spider which is NOT poisonous. Click picture to see this guy up close and check out the hairy legs.

When I first saw him I thought it was the sunflower starting to bloom way too early. I checked back a few hours later and it was sitting in the top of a different sunflower seedling. I now think this may be a hunting strategy. Make yourself look like a yummy flower to other bugs and then when they check you out, you EAT them!

Turquoise Lake, Colorado - June 20, 2009

Caught one lake trout in the morning and Zoe caught a cutthroat trout (she didn't want to hold it). The rest came during the afternoon rain. The bigger lake trout came on the rigger at 20 feet with silver/red krocodile spoon. The others came on a rainbow rapala x-rap and one from a bright pink rooster tail spinner. Between 3 of us (Greg, Steve & me) we also caught 12 cutthroats, but only kept the ones that were badly hooked (Steve was draggin' a treble hook, worm and split shot).

There were hundreds of swallows flying just above the water. You can see some in the picture of cloudy Mt. Sherman (14,036 feet). I saw one swallow go for the same bug a trout went for. It looked like the trout was going to eat the bird.