Wow!! That's amazing and scary at the same time! It looks like a green lynx spider, but yours has a lot more red on it than the pics in the link below.

I've been seeing a lot more insects in the yard recently, as well. I saw 3 painted lady butterflies in the yard yesterday, as well as swarms of dragonflies and the assorted praying mantis....and spiders galore (but nothing like your lynx!). I'm thinking it might be the cooler weather, but who knows?

Thanks for sharing your pic! :)

Brenda

Here is a link that might be useful: Green lynx spider

Mojoboo, Ive found this spider in my basil plant. I thought it was a green lynx (which it might be) but it had the same coloring as yours. It was guarding an egg in the plant.

Thanks Skrip and Brenda, I've been wondering what kind of spider that is! It does look like the same markings as the picture in that link that has "Adult" in the caption. It was huge, maybe about 3/4 of an inch from head to tip of abdomen. I jumped back as I was leaning over looking at it. Something flew by and it lunged, it looked like it was gonna jump on me!

I've not been able to find that spider again in the past few days. I'm hoping it got full, and went in hiding somewhere while it molts or something. I did see another smaller spider yesterday that had a metallic greenish colored abdomen, maybe a younger one? It caught a butterfly. I need to find a way to convince it to only eat pests. =)

Interesting! Yes, it looks like a Green Lynx to me too. They are neat to watch. The one I found was guarding an egg nest as well. I posted a bunch of spider pix in a Halloween post over on the Cacti Gallery, if you care to take a look ~I linked below.

~Rosemarie

Here is a link that might be useful: post w spider pix