Favoritos de faerthen

Researching this guy was a surprise. I found four spiders in the same woodpile. One was a classic black, large, bulbous and glossy female; another looked just like her, but smaller and with some stripes (male).

Then there was this guy, who ran away before I could flip him over. Turns out that this is also a male Black Widow. They are apparently often grey or brown like this.

The fourth was a wolf spider who zipped off before being photographed :)

Almost certainly porcupine tracks but I can’t figure out what in the world the orange is or where it came from. It continued along the tracks for more than 50 yards. Such an unnatural color and it was found in an area pretty far from any human interference

A small live Porpita porpita was found near Packery Channel, Padre Island. The diameter of the round float was about 12 mm, about half of the maximum diameter.

Porpita porpita is a condrophore, a colony of organisms in the phylum Cnidaria. It drifts on the surface of the sea. A close relative is Velella velella, which also has a disc with a sail. Physalia physalis is also colonial, but belongs to a different order, Siphonophorae.

The specimen was placed in a container for photos. The second photo shows the underside of the disc. All photos were taken with a cell phone (Samsung Galaxy S7 with a macro lens).

Several beached and mostly dried specimens of Blue Button were also observed. Also observed were some purple snails, Janthina globosa:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15218146