5-20 Today in my mowing, two clusters of several hundred minute spiderlings each mimicked seed heads on stalks of grass so convincingly that I nearly overlooked them. Only the fact that they were straw colored in a field where the grass seed heads were still green gave them away.

The spiderlings had tied off the grass stalks with silk, bowing their tips down to just below horizontal. Tight under the outer tip they clustered tightly in a nearly invisible web, abdomens out, heads in, legs tight to bodies. Each tiny straw colored seedlike abdomen marked with a black blotch near its tip. Several hundred of them formed a very convincing 'seed head' perhaps one-and-a-quarter inches long and three-eighths of an inch wide.

I tried to get a picture of them and in doing so I carelessly snagged a wispy strand of web. Instantly the spiderlings scattered to all points of the compass. An hour later they were once again clustered tightly where I first observed them.

I was unable to identify them...I was barely able to see any one individual. But I'm going to refer to them as Straw Colored Grass Seed Mimics. That name seems to capture their essence, and who can argue that?

John