The small forest of Futamurayama is part of several biology projects of the city Toyoake. Measures are taken to keep the biological diversity high—for example maintaining a small swamp—and many trees are indicated with name plates so that children and grownups can learn about them. There is a good place for watching birds (between the main temple and the watchtower), sometimes reptiles can be seen, and very rarely a mammal. But the most dominant species in this small forest are the insects. There are the annoying ones that are frequent in some seasons, such as the mosquitos that bite you and the spiders that make their webs across the paths. And there are the beautiful ones, like the butterflies, the dragonflies, and—again—the spiders. In some part of the summer season, many butterflies can be found flying around the top of the watchtower.
In the past, I have sometimes made pictures of these insects, and here I show a few plus two short videos. The video at the end shows three big insects: The yellow-black Jorō spider (a female, the males are much smaller) made a web across the path so big that it even caught a cicada, but the spider has to watch from the corner of the web how the stronger hornet—which does not seem to care about the web—devours another prey of the spider. The picture before that video shows little orange balls that I have often seen at the foot of some trees and which I guess to be secretions of an insect that lives at the foot of the tree; however, they may be fungal, and if anyone knows what they are please tell me.
Newly added information: I just asked the names of the species shown in this post to my good friend Rika Kosaka who lives in Mie-ken and knows almost everything about Japanese nature. Of course she immediately replied with their names and an explanation for the orange little balls. That information is added under the pictures.
