Garden Pic Wednesday: Garden Wildlife!

I'm very excited!

This is the time of year when my garden, particularly any parsley or dill, becomes a nursery for Black Swallowtails!
I saw Mrs. Swallowtail leaving eggs just over a day ago. They were white dots the size of pinheads. Today, tiny caterpillars. Hopefully I'll get some good photos as they grow! They're quite pretty! And, if I pay very close attention, perhaps even newly hatched butterflies!

Today's garden pics are a couple of fairly good bird shots and one amazing spider pic!

I say "fairly good" shots of the birds, because I'm shooting through my sliding glass door at birds roughly 20 feet away.

First up: a common Eastern Blue Jay enjoying a piece of popcorn.

They like to take it up to the fence and peck the kennel out of it.
Genders look identical.

Next: Mrs. Cardinal
She, too, is looking for popcorn. Among cardinals, males are red with a black mask and females are this muted fawn with touches of redish-orange, a gray mask and bright orange beak.

Finally, a cool shot of a White Crab Spider holding a sweat bee.
Sometimes called a "flower spider," they lurk on flowers, hunting & catching small flying prey. They're not web-spinners.
I had to look him up on-line. It gets its name "crab" because it has sort of a crabbish look about it's leg arrangement. (No claws, of course.)  It's itty-bitty in size and completely harmless to humans.

I found it interesting because it was like a little white ghost hidden among the Zinnia petals camouflaging itself under this sweat bee it was holding over it's head above the petals as if to say, "There's nothing here. Just a little bee." 

I squinted at the bee, thinking it looked odd, resting there on the petals, not moving."

I touched the flower stem, intending to clip it, jarring the flower slightly, startling the white spider, so he came out of hiding with his dead bee. 

We stared at it each other.
"Ah-ha," he declared, "Madame, you are ruining my savoir-faire! Be gone with you!" 

So I left him to his business and he hid back in the petals.

*****

(Savoir-faire means "know how")