Three orbs, three colors

One orb, the largest of the three, is yellow; it belongs to a spider. The other two orbs, equal in size to each other but smaller than that of the spider, are azure; they’re the characteristically bulging eyes on opposite sides of a damselfly’s head. The third color is red, the red of a turk’s cap flower, Malvaviscus arboreus, whose out-of-focus presence in the background frames the drama of the yellow and blue orbs, in which the damselfly has succumbed to the spider. Though these predatory scenes are common in nature, some of you understandably find them unpleasant, so I’ve shrunk the picture to the icon in the next line. Click it if you’d like to see the dramatic details, pass it by if you’d prefer not to.

I took this picture on June 16 at Hornsby Bend in southeast Austin.

© 2012 Steven Schwartzman