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This portrait depicts a juvenile raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus), taken at 3.9:1 magnification, eating a wet mosquito which it had just picked up from the water surface of a blue rain water barrel in the garden.
Fortunately for me the mosquito must've been very tasty because it was quite occupied with eating and let me get way closer than I could've hoped.
The raft spider is, along with its cousin, the largest spider in Sweden, but this juvenile was less than 10 mm in body length, despite looking massive here.
A shot of the very same spider, but standing on the rose petals floating on the water surface here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/48506742957/
I went to my fav spot in Tyresta National Park a couple of days ago hoping to find some demoiselles, but before I got to those, I spotted this small (4mm / .16") male v-fronted jumper (Aelurillus v-insignitus) and followed him around a bit.
Eventually (after some herding) I was rewarded with a couple of shots from the front showing those big green eyes.
Really pleased with my catch, I proceeded to shoot demoiselles and aven came across some crayfish which was a cool find!
Back home I begin processing my shots and when I came to the jumper, I noticed some sort of weird protrusion from the twig beneath the spider - and then, finally, I realised that Mr. Spider actually had caught a leafhopper and was trying to eat it!
Now, I'm not very versed in leafhoppers, but thanks to the internet, I've learned that this is a species called Arocephalus longiceps - a new species for the province of Sörmland no less.
Found this large female European garder spider (Araneus diadematus) quite high up outside my nearest neighbor's house.
She sat there in her web eating that little something she had caught at just a little higher than I could reach with my eye against the camera's eye piece so I had to wing it a little and look through it from a little distance to nail the focus.
Part 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/43967121254/
Part 2 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/32847495647/
Thistles are often excellent places to find bugs. This one at Åva Stensjödal in Tyresta National Park held, among other things, this female goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) which had surprised and killed some sort of male peat hoverfly (Sericomyia sp.).
We'll come back to this thistle later - it held more surprises.
Some time ago this cute little jumping spider which is enjoying a freshly caught fly would be known as a Sitticus terebratus, but after a name revision, this is now a Attulus terebratus.
I shot him without food (and saw him give a female a kiss!), but he was way less calm then.
After coming back with the MP-E65mm on the camera and found him with the fly, he was way calmer and I could gradually get closer and closer until I got this one which is at 4.8:1 magnification.
Since male spiders use their pedipalps (the short "arms") to transfer the sperm to the female, adult males have significantly thicker pedipalps, leading to them looking like these almost mitten-like ones.
Sneaking around the cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) near the Nedre Dammen pond at Stensjödal in Tyresta National Park, I found this lady goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) busy eating the pine parasyrphus hoverfly (Parasyrphus vittiger) she had just caught.
These ones can alter their colour from white to lime green to mango yellow (though it takes several days to complete a single shift), but here the white outfit was clearly the correct one. I only saw the hoverfly in a weird position until I got really close.
This was taken using a Canon MP-E65mm lens at 2:1 magnification.
Part 1 (at 1.5:1 mag) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/49963741403/
After a (great) day of shooting at Åva-Stensjödal I was ready to pack up and head home - but decided to just have another look near the ruin of the old mill and managed to find this female green crab spider (Diaea dorsata) - with a catch!
Not sure exactly what she's got there but it looks like some sort of caddisfly to me.
Regardless, she was not at all in the mood to show it to me and kept moving to the far side regardless of from which angle I approached.
In the end, I held the camera with one hand and waved the other one behind the spider causing her to move back to my side and got a couple of shots.
Unknown species of robber fly, though I'm suspecting it's a kite-tailed robber fly (Tolmerus atricapillus) enjoying its freshly caught lunch which I think is some sort of tortricid moth
I would imagine that eating a moth like this with all those hairs would mean you end up with a lot of hairs in your mouth.
This Attulus terebratus jumping spider on the white garage doors is of couser not affected by this. Like all spiders, it lacks jaws and does not eat the moth. Instead it uses it venom which liquifies the innards which then can be sucked out like a tasty moth smoothie - void of any annoying hairs.
Part 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52203097465/
Here's a *very* ambitious red wood ant (Formica rufa) on top of a tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).
She has come across a bee beetle (Trichuis fasciatus), gorging itself on pollen and decided that it was exactly what she needed to bring home to the ant hill that day.
The bee beetle wasn't very impressed though and when the ant bit down on a leg, the beetle began shaking it, giving the ant the full rodeo experience.
Miss Ant didn't give up that easily though. This is from the second of a total of four rides she took at this attraction before calling it quits and finally leaving the beetle alone.
A shot of the first attempt she made can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52263405305/
Second try here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52310245721/
Up until I came across this one on a kiwi plant in my mother-in-law's garden, I considered lacewings as the green or blue ones in Chrysopidae - but this one isn't.
It's one of the brown lacewings in the family Hemerobiidae - I'm almost certain it is a species known as Hemerobius micans.
To me it is amazing how similar and yet also different it can look at the same time. Compare it to a "normal" one here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/27116394467/
Also, if you look closely on the left front leg, you can see that it had an unwanted passenger on there - some sort of red parasitic mite.
It kind of looks a little awkward trying to eat the freshly caught aphid when you have big fuzzy mittens on, but as this Attulus terebratus is a male so he would have to make do - and he did.
Photo taken at 3.9:1 magnification using the Canon MP-E65mm.
Found this large female European garder spider (Araneus diadematus) quite high up outside my nearest neighbor's house.
She sat there in her web eating that little something she had caught at just a little higher than I could reach with my eye against the camera's eye piece so I had to wing it a little and look through it from a little distance to nail the focus.
Part 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/43967121254/
Here's a *very* ambitious red wood ant (Formica rufa) on top of a tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).
She has come across a bee beetle (Trichuis fasciatus), gorging itself on pollen and decided that it was exactly what she needed to bring home to the ant hill that day.
The bee beetle wasn't very impressed though and when the ant bit down on a leg, the beetle began shaking it, giving the ant the full rodeo experience.
Miss Ant didn't give up that easily though. She tried three more legs and was subesquently given three more rides before calling it quits and finally leaving the beetle alone.
The female red-banded sand wasp (Ammophila sabulosa), also known as the red-belted sand wasp, starts of by building several (up to ten or so) burrows in the sand. She then seals them up provisionally and go out hunting for caterpillars.
The prey is then paralyzed and transported back to one of the burrows - on foot if it is to eavy to fly with - and dragged down into it where it is left with an egg before she seal it up.
When the egg hatches, the larvae have fresh food to eat and after pupating, the then adult wasp will dig its way out.
As for the prey here - it is difficult to tell the exact species as there are several similar species, but a more knowledgable friend made a guess that it might be a catepillar of the moth with the interesting name "silver Y" (Autographa gamma), a name it has gotten from the small white/silver y on the wings.
Carl Linnaeus thought the Y was more a "γ" (the greek character gamma) instead so both the scientific name and the Swedish one (Linnaeus was a Swede) refer to it that way instead.
Here is a quite small jumping spider known as Attulus terebratus , happily snacking on some sort of aphid (Aphididae sp.)
This was taken with the MP-E65mm at the comparatively high magnification of 3.7:1.
Probably the best time to photograph damselflies, like this male common bluet (Enallagma cyathigerum), except for when just having climbed out of their larval skin and are unable to fly plus when asleep, is when they're eating.
This one from the Drevviken nature reserve in Skogås, Sweden made a couple of half-hearted tries to escape me, but basically just went to the next blade of grass to continue eating whatever small little something he had caught.
Two more shots from the same meeting here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51765429141/
Back when I found some of the highly invasive Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) on Havtornsudd Point on the Gålö Peninsula, there were plenty of interesting bugs hanging out in it.
One of the first ones I saw was this male common bluetail (Ischnura elegans) which was trying to eat some sort of small red mite which it had caught.
There are several species of these blue (at least the males) damselflies here, but I think I like this one the best. The black abdomen with a distinct blue tip looks cool when they are hovering around.
Part 1, showing the entire damsel, here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52334358210/
Say goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) and most who recognize the species think of a white or yellow or light green (yes, they can change colour) spider which likes to ambush insects from flowers.
What everybody doesn't know though is that all of those are females and that the male goldenrod crab spider not only looks quite different, but is also considerably smaller.
Here is a male which has caught and is in the process of eating what I believe is some sort of root-maggot fly (Anthomyiidae sp.). It's sitting on the cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) near the Nedre Dammen pond at Stensjödal in Tyresta National Park.
Also, how about that shimmer on the fly's wing?
Shot using the Canon MP-E65mm at 2.2:1 magnification.
Part 1 (at 1.8:1 mag) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/50033851053/
Part 2 (at 2.2:1 mag) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/50621670821/
In my opinion, this is one of the cuter species of jumping spider that can be found here - a female v-fronted jumper (Aelurillus v-insignitus).
The name v-insignitus stems from the white chevron on the head of the male spider as "v-insignitus" means "v signed". The pattern on the female is pretty badass as well and reminds me of a jaguar.
Pt. 1: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/28973614867/
Pt. 2: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/42330295980/
Pt. 3: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/43801615114/
This is a juvenile raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus), photographed at 3.3:1 magnification, eating a wet mosquito which it had just picked up from the water surface of a very blue rain water barrel in the garden.
Fortunately for me the mosquito must've been very tasty because it was quite occupied with eating and let me get way closer than I could've hoped.
The raft spider is, along with its cousin, the largest spider in Sweden, but this juvenile was less than 10 mm in body length, despite looking massive here!
Part 1 (at even greater magnification) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/48515193146/
A shot of the very same spider, but standing on the rose petals floating on the water surface here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/48506742957/
This male common bluetail (Ischnura senegalensis) was most accomodating and allowed me to try out lots of different settings and angles before he flew a few decimeters to catch one of the white Meenoplid planthoppers. (Nisia_sp.) buzzing around before landing on the same spot to eat it.
Shot of the entire damselfly here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/38954678690/
and one of the planthoppers before becoming lunch here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/40751429602/
This cutie is a female Attulus terebratus jumping spider. If you look closely (please do), you'll notice that she is busy eating a small aphid.
This is a rather small species, but shot at 3.7:1 magnification like this, you can still see a lot of detail.
The beautiful butterfly here is a Sara longwing (Heliconius sara), but that's not the cool thing about the shot. Zoom in on the front legs and you'll find one of the more optimistic ants I've ever seen.
It's not exactly a great shot for identifying the ant, but surprisingly good for handheld indoors in natural light. A good friend who knows his way around ants (Hi Jitte!) came up with a maybe in form of it being a pavement ant (Tetramorium sp.) so we'll go with that (as a maybe).
I highly suspect the ant came home without this prize though.
This male common bluetail (Ischnura senegalensis) was most accomodating and allowed me to try out lots of different settings and angles before he flew a few decimeters to catch one of the white Meenoplid planthoppers. (Nisia sp.) buzzing around before landing on the same spot to eat it.
Zoom in on the water drops - it is possible to see part of the vegetation around this reflected in the top one!
I found this one early in the morning in the garden at Mercury Phu Quoc Resort and Villas in Phu Quoc, Vietnam back in early 2018.
Part 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/47374323762
Part 2 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/27217804128/
Shot of the entire damselfly here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/38954678690/
and one of the planthoppers before becoming lunch here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/40751429602/
This juvenile raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus) has built its web in the an apple-of-Peru (Nicandra physalodes) and apparently it was the right place as it has just caught a fly for lunch.
A fortunate catch for me - and for the fly! This is a stripe-legged robber fly (Dioctria hyalipennis) which was so occupied with devouring some sort of ichneumon wasp on the edge of a leaf on the bowl of beauty peonies (Paeonia lactiflora) that it didn't mind me getting several shots of it.
I had the MP-E65mm on the camera and set it to 1.5:1 magnification and managed three shots without it moving so I could stack them using Zerene Stacker in a pretty much effortless stack with minimal retouching.
While out walking in the water (using waders) at the Nedre Dammen pond at Åva-Stensjödal in Tyresta National Park, Sweden, I came across this male variable bluet (Coenagrion pulchellum).
It had caught a little something and was happily munching away at it on a leaf and the resulting shot came out really nice, if I may say so myself.
Part 1 shows a larger part of the little predator here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52538370205/
I posted a shot of one of these Attulus terebratus jumping spiders eating a yellow moth which was sort of reminiscent of potato chips.
Well, here is one of its buddies eating a green aphid which in the same way looks llike it is eating a grape, right?
The buddy can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52457770677/
This is a male common bluet (Enallagma cyathigerum) which had caught himself som sort of small insect in the Drevviken nature reserve just south of Stockholm, Sweden, and wanted to eat it so much that he didn't care about me sticking my lens in close and snap a few shots.
I think the composition came out really nice with the way the reed he was sitting on crossed another reed, creating some nice intersecting lines in the shot, right?
Here's a *very* ambitious red wood ant (Formica rufa) on top of a tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).
She has come across a bee beetle (Trichuis fasciatus), gorging itself on pollen and decided that it was exactly what she needed to bring home to the ant hill that day.
The bee beetle wasn't very impressed though and when the ant bit down on a leg, the beetle began shaking it, giving the ant the full rodeo experience.
Miss Ant didn't give up that easily though. This is from the second of a total of four rides she took at this attraction before calling it quits and finally leaving the beetle alone.
A shot of the first attempt she made can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52263405305/
Thistles are often excellent places to find bugs. This one at Åva Stensjödal in Tyresta National Park held, among other things, this female goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) which had surprised and killed some sort of male peat hoverfly (Sericomyia sp.).
Part 1 was taken from the other side and shows the spider better here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52429126852/
We'll come back to this thistle later - it held more surprises.
Here's an unforunate house fly who got its visit to the snowdrop anemone (Anemone sylvestris) - and life - cut short by a juvenile raft spider (Dolomedes fimbratus).
I came across this male ruddy darter (Sympetrum sanguineum) on the ruin wall of the old mill at Åva. there were loads of stinging nettles around, about chest high, so I were glad I had chosen long pants. Just as I reached the wall, the dragon fluttered away - but it immediately came back around so I tried holding my hand out. Success! It decided to land on me and that's when I saw that it had caught something.
The victim here is some sort of fly and I watched through the lens as the darter devoured it. In this shot, the face and one compound eye of the fly is still showing, but those mouthparts soon turned into an unrecognisable pulp. Dragonflies definietly are effective - if somewhat grisly - eaters.
This is a juvenile raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus), photographed at 3.7:1 magnification, eating a wet mosquito which it had just picked up from the water surface of a very blue rain water barrel in the garden.
Fortunately for me the mosquito must've been very tasty because it was quite occupied with eating and let me get way closer than I could've hoped.
The raft spider is, along with its cousin, the largest spider in Sweden, but this juvenile was less than 10 mm in body length, despite looking massive here!
Part 1 (at even greater magnification) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/48515193146/
Part 2 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/49279649447/
Three more shots, a little further away, but showing the acutal eating better here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/48734313741/
here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/50540902938/
and here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52052279513/
For change of colour, here are three shots of the very same spider, but standing on the rose petals floating on the water surface here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/48506742957/
An Attulus terebratus jumping spider which has caught some sort of moth and was snacking on it when I found it.
It wasn't interested in sharing though and tried backing in with its rather large meal between the planks in the wall but there really wasn't enough room there so this was as far in as it got.
If you zoom in on the face of the spider, you can see that some of the moth's scales has rubbed off and are all over the jumper's face and eyes.
Walking towards the old miller's cottage at Åva-Stensjödal I noticed a green-veined white (Pieris napi) sitting on a yellow hawkweed flower (Hiearacium sp.).
"Nice!", I thought. A bit of a weird position, but still a potentially cool shot if it doesn't fly away.
So I managed to snap a shot with it still there when I began suspecting there was more to this scene than I had thought.
And upon further inspection I realized that the risk of it flying off was pretty slim - as this butterfly had turned into lunch for a female goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) in yellow mode which made for a downright awesome camouflage!
Another one of those shots can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51340047179/
After getting some shots of it I continued in pursuit of other motives - but when walking back I had the MP-E65 mm on the camera instead of the 100 mm f/2.8 and that's when I saw that Mrs. Spider was still eating the butterfly!
The MP-E65 obviously let me get closer so I took a couple of additional shots, including this one at 2:1 magnification: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51650253463
This particular one is however one of the first set with the 100mm. Straight for the jugular, right?
Ok, so at first when you see this shot, you're thinking that it is a zebra longwing (Heliconius charithonia).
That in itself is correct, but when I look a little closer, I'm reminded of a joke my late father used to tell.
It was about an elephant who every morning as he was going to drink some water he passed an anthill. And every day he stuck his trunk down into the hill and blew as hard as he could and watched the ants and their house being thrown into the air.
While the elephant thought it was very amusing, the ants unsurprisingly weren't quite as fond of his routine so one morning when the elephant came around, they were prepared. On a given signal, every single ant threw itself at their tormentor and tried biting him.
The elephant however, just laughed at them and shook his body, causing all the ants to fly off.
All but one. A single ant had managed to hang on and was still on the elephant's neck!
That's when one of the other and screamed at the top of his lungs: "Strangle him, Tony! Strangle him!"
About now, I bet you're wondering what this has to do with a heliconiid butterfly, right? Well, if you look at the legs of the butterfly, you'll notice that "Tony" is there, trying to claim the butterfly as his prize!
The ant is mot likely a common red ant (Myrmica rubra) or some closely related species. M. rubra is often (and erroneously) called the European fire ant based on behaviour, but it isn't closely related to the real fire ant.
A male common bluet (Enallagma cyathigerum) busy eating some sort of smaller insect. It had devoured too much of its prey for me to be able to identify what it used to be.
If you look in between those large blue eyes, you can see three small red pearls in a triangular formation. These are ocelli (singular: ocellus) - simple eyes that help insects gather additional information on top of what the main pair provides. Note that these aren't "simple" as in limited - just "simple" as in "not compound eyes".
For another shot of the same damsel, taken just before this one, please have a look here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51474863422/
A long-jawed orb-weaver (Tetragnatha sp.) which is busy wrapping up the small green insect which just got stuck in its web across the small pond in the garden at Mercury Phu Quoc Resort & Villas in Phu Quoc, Vietnam.
When I first heard the claim that harvestmen like this Opilio canestrinii are known to pick food out of spider webs, I dismissed this as random occurrances - but it turns out to be really quite common.
This common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) got stuck and was killed in the web of a male Europan garden spider (Araneus diadematus) just outside our front door. The web later looked disheveled and abandoned and every time I got home I saw it and thought that I should remove it - and the remains of the wasp - as it looked a little untidy.
I always seemed to have my hands full when passing so I never got around to it which this harvestman was only too happy about. A couple of days later I found it busy with munching on the wasp. No idea what happened to the spider - perhaps he was off to find a nice mama spider to get busy with.
Part 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51654100586/
Oh, another one of those stitched panorama macro shots where the subject is to large to fit in frame, right?
Wrong. This blunt stretch spider (Tetragnatha obtusa) is absolutely small enough to fit in frame (as can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52807137438/), but since the top and bottom was just pure white, I figured I could get away with cropping that away and make this a 21:9 image.
And the trickery doesn't stop there. This is also rotated 180 degrees as I found this one upside-down in the veranda ceiling so I had to get a stool (which was a little too high) and shoot this with the camera upside down, pressing the shutter button with my left pinky finger (my mom took a photo of me looking very elegant here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52806686381/).
This is a focus stack, but instead of just taking multiple shots while moving or shifting focus ever so slightly, here I actually lowered the camera and rested between two shots because of the awkward position and still somehow managed to get the exact same angle and focus where it was needed - I'm as surprised as anyone!
Looking closely at this spider, you can see what will be its doom. On the back of it, there is a larvae of the parasitic wasp Acrodactyla quadrisculpta which has attached itself and will eat of the spider - but not enough to kill it until the larvae is ready to pupate.
Walking towards the old miller's cottage at Åva-Stensjödal I noticed a green-veined white (Pieris napi) sitting on a yellow hawkweed flower (Hiearacium sp.).
"Nice!", I thought. A bit of a weird position, but still a potentially cool shot if it doesn't fly away.
So I managed to snap a shot with it still there when I began suspecting there was more to this scene than I had thought.
And upon further inspection I realized that the risk of it flying off was pretty slim - as this butterfly had turned into lunch for a female goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) in yellow mode which made for a downright awesome camouflage!
One of those shots can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/51340047179/
After getting some shots of it I continued in pursuit of other motives - but when walking back I had the MP-E65 mm on the camera instead of the 100 mm f/2.8 and that's when I saw that Mrs. Spider was still eating the butterfly!
The MP-E65 obviously let me get closer so I took a couple of additional shots, including this one at 2:1 magnification.
Here we can see that those white scales of the butterfly's wings really seem to end up just about anywhere - the spider is covered in them!
The walnut orb weaver (Nuctenea umbratica) fills pretty much the same niche as the European garden spider (Araneus diadematus) - except for taking the night shift which means they can occupy the same places as the latter is diurnal.
This particular one, a female which I found half an hour after midnight just outside my neighbour's front door has managed to catch a fly which she was eating. Even though the spider's digestive juices have turned the fly into more or less a black soggy ball, we can actually determine that it was a female fly. You see, the fly was full of eggs which looks like grains of rice in this shot.
Also, if you're wondering why the spider is called the "walnut orb weaver", take a look at the top of that abdomen. The pattern on these vaguely resembles a walnut. In Swedish, it's called "större skuggspindel" which translates into "greater shadow spider", something which aligns nicely both with the scientific name "umbratica" meaning "in the shadows", but also it's behaviour as they are rarely out in the sunlight.
There is also a "lesser shadow spider" (N. silvicultrix) which arart from being smaller (duh) has a more contrasty colouration. Those are rarely seen on the side of buildings though and I have yet to find one.
Mrs. European garden spider (Araneus diadematus) busy eating lunch in her web in the thuja hedge around our garden.
Part 1 here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52694549316/
Two shots of a second spider in here web right next to this one here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/52721231522/
One day back in Early August I happened upon a new nature reserve quite close to where I live. It's the Svartkällsskogen nature reserve which apparently houses a rare species of dragonfly, namely the scarce chaser (Libellula fulva).
I had no luck finding that one, but saw at least four other species instead, including this fourspotted chaser/skimmer (Libellula quadrimaculata) which was thoroughly enjoying eating a crane fly. I found it on a small bog next to a lovely small forest lake which turned out to actually be named "lilla skogsjön", menaing small forest lake.
Part 1 (which shows what remains of the crane fly better) here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/50192835827/
Walking back along a small forest road outside Härnösand, Sweden after a nice photo walk, I saw plenty of these guys floating among the grass and branches next to the road.
None of them were the least bit interested in staying still long enough for me to manage to take any photos of them - until this one. It's a male spearhead bluet (Coenagrion hastulatum) and the reason it didn't fly off was that it had caught itself some sort of small Hemipteran which was more important to devour.
Spider venom not only kills their prey, but it also contain enzymes which break down the insides of the food so it can be ingested.
Since spiders haven't got jaws that can chew or breat a victim into smaller parts, they instead rely on liquifying their food.
Looking at the eyes of the small fly which this male Attulus terebratus jumping spider has caught, it appears they generate quite a lot of suction when consuming their prey - enough to make the eyes compress inwards!