Not a tuft of hair

On July 9th I checked out a large limestone overhang in the little-frequented southern part of Great Hills Park. On the underside of the overhang I noticed what appeared to be a large tuft of hair, though I knew it couldn’t be that. It turned out to be a bunch of daddy longlegs that had clustered in the way they seem fond of doing. Another name for daddy longlegs is harvestmen but another name for them isn’t spiders, because these creatures are in a different group of animals that you can read about in an article from Clemson University.

It’s rare that I aim my camera straight up, but this was one of those times. I do occasionally use flash, and I had to for this photograph because it’s always pretty dark under that limestone overhang. The wall of the overhang, by the way, was (and still is) the site of mud dauber wasp tubes that appeared in these pages two summers ago.

© 2014 Steven Schwartzman