I’m running out of time today, so I’m going to throw a bunch of images at you with little comment. These are from my recent trip to The Papua New Guinea highlands near Madang. The base at Ukarumpa (SIL) was familiar to me when my son was attending high school. We made the 466 kilometre round-trip every three weeks.

Here are some lilies in someone’s yard:

Ukarumpa looks a lot like a little Kentucky town plopped down in PNG. Though it contains a variety of nationalities, it feels very American to me – no problem, if you like it. I prefer my surroundings a little less familiar and a little more exotic.

When I saw this little bush, I thought the leaves were pinkish. When I looked closer, I noticed that there were tiny red flowers between the bases of the leaves. On the flowers are tinier black bugs crawling around:

The entire image above is only about three centimetres.

Here is a nice yellow flower without much special appeal, except, if you look at the small white dot to the upper left of the centre you will see a scale insect: (click to enlarge)

These captured my attention for their intense colour. There was no sun when I took this shot. The colours were so bright that they overload the capacity of the camera. They nearly overload the capacity of my eyes also. Like the old Jerry Seinfeld joke, “You don’t stare at it, you get a sense of it and look away”.

Here is a nice, big, juicy yellow spider for you:

It was about the size of a golf ball, nowhere near as big as I’ve seen elsewhere. A hand-sized spider would not be unusual in the lowland rainforest.

What is interesting about this spider image is that you can see that it is ‘listening’ to its web:

It holds a special web filament that is connected just so to the rest of the web. This filament transmits any vibrations of prey landing on the net to the spider’s ‘ear’ leg.

I threw a hapless ant into the web. You can guess the outcome.

I know. I should grow up.

Related posts:

1. More Life at Ukarumpa I’m writing this on Independence Day for release tomorrow, because I want to have a day off. It’s the time machine thing again. It’s only a small cheat. I still have to do the work. I just get to do it a day early. I’ll toss out a few more...
2. Remembering the Highlands Last Thursday, I did something that I've not done for several years. I drove a truck from Madang to Ukarumpa, near Kainantu, in the highlands near Madang....
3. The Spider and the Fly And then the fly flew. I doubt a spider thinks much about disappointment. It's a waiting game. Patience is the key. The occasional meal will suffice. Would that we had such patience....
4. Strolling Through My Garden Stroll around MadDog's garden looking for for spiders, Coleus, lichens, a flame tree and a head-spinning panorama - Jan Messersmith, Madang, Papua New Guinea...
5. Bachelor’s Dinner – PNG Style As a public service to all PNG men who are suffering, as I am, without a woman (temporarily, at least, for me), I’m going to give you a recipe for a delicious and nutritious dinner that you can prepare in fifteen minutes, not counting the time for the bush walk...
6. A Little Nature Walk in My Garden It's good to get out in the morning to catch the sunrise and think about what the day may bring. A quiet walk in the garden is just the ticket!...
7. Start With Fish! For the first post of a new year with what else can I begin? It has to be fish! However, let us begin with things NOT fish. How about a spider?...

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 15:15 and is filed under Mixed Nuts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.