- Joined
- Feb 13, 2006
- Messages
- 8,656
A little bit about my trip. I moved recently from Oregon (land of no tarantulas) to Colorado. After hearing rumors of mass migrations of mms starting in mid Sept I decided to investigate! I headed out a bit south and east of my location here in Colorado Springs, and once I started seeing areas of undisturbed land by the freeway I just picked a place to pull off. I thought spotting a burrow was going to be hard, but NO! They were EVERYWHERE. I was on a patch of land maybe 150 yards long and 50 yards wide parallel to train tracks next to the freeway and I had to have seen at least 100+ active burrows. I am sure I missed plenty too. I saw all stages of growth with the exception of slings. Some burrows had molts pressed to the side walls near the top of the burrow (thought that was cool to see). Any burrow I found webbed shut had a recently mature male inside. Many of the burrows had remains of beetles all over the place. At one point I found what I called a tarantula man camp lol. It was a fairly small area maybe 20 sq feet or so, but there were about 30 males living in that area of all stages, mostly immature, but I did find at least 2 mms there too. One tickle at the burrows entrance with a blade of grass and these guys would fly out to attack it. I mean ALL the way out of the burrow. I am sure I missed something, but that is the bulk of it!
(interesting note about the climate here, it was about 95 when I was out that day but that did not deter these guys much, the second the sun went down the temps dropped by 35 degrees within an hr. Winters here can be rough too with the temps hitting -20 last winter) These guys are tough!
Hope you enjoy!
Juvie Male burrow,
And its resident,
Adult female and juvie burrows side by side,
MM burrow,
Wandering MM,
You can see how dry it is out there right now, but his burrow is actually in a low spot that gets flooded! (juvie male)
Adult female hanging out on top of her burrow, (bad pic had to take it from about 15 yards away)
And she ran when I took one more step toward her,
Habitat,
More Hab,
Female,
And the pair I watched mate! I spotted the wandering male just as he was approaching her burrow. He coaxed her out over a period of 20-30 mins and did the deed! I chopped it down to the highlights! It was just after sunset when this occurred, and I was getting absolutely bombarded by biting bugs so it was a little rough. Plus I had to shoot the video with my iphone so the quality is not the best. But I am still glad I got to see it! (and the mm did escape scott free lol)
http://youtu.be/KWGDD7i_6Dg
(interesting note about the climate here, it was about 95 when I was out that day but that did not deter these guys much, the second the sun went down the temps dropped by 35 degrees within an hr. Winters here can be rough too with the temps hitting -20 last winter) These guys are tough!
Hope you enjoy!
Juvie Male burrow,
And its resident,
Adult female and juvie burrows side by side,
MM burrow,
Wandering MM,
You can see how dry it is out there right now, but his burrow is actually in a low spot that gets flooded! (juvie male)
Adult female hanging out on top of her burrow, (bad pic had to take it from about 15 yards away)
And she ran when I took one more step toward her,
Habitat,
More Hab,
Female,
And the pair I watched mate! I spotted the wandering male just as he was approaching her burrow. He coaxed her out over a period of 20-30 mins and did the deed! I chopped it down to the highlights! It was just after sunset when this occurred, and I was getting absolutely bombarded by biting bugs so it was a little rough. Plus I had to shoot the video with my iphone so the quality is not the best. But I am still glad I got to see it! (and the mm did escape scott free lol)
http://youtu.be/KWGDD7i_6Dg