Cicada Sitting Silently, Spider Spinning Surreptitiously

The end of summer means the death of some creatures. They slow down and sit still as they near the end of their life cycle. I met a cicada that didn't move no matter how close I got, though later it was gone. Did it become someone else's meal or was it just fooling me? It's also the time of big spiders, at least around my house. Getting good pictures of them and their webs are hard due to the delicate, almost invisible strands of their webs.

I'm fascinated by that splash of green at the base of its wing.

Did the beauty of its wing give humans the idea for stain glass windows?

Last night I saw this spider, the size and color of a small crab, busily building her web between our lamp post and a bush.

This is her underside. See the two strands leaving her posterior and/or belly? I watched as she guided these strands to each support strand and stuck them to it, going around and around and around in ever larger circles. Look at the spacing between some of the strands on the bottom left; it's like she measured each to be exactly the same distance from the previous one. Fascinating.

Then I blew at the web to get her to stop moving so quickly as my camera couldn't focus on the blur of activity. She pulled in her legs and held perfectly still. This is her back side. I wonder what those two holes on her back are? I should ask my grandson the biologist; he'll probably know.