Late one evening last summer (August), my husband and I were looking for praying mantids in our yard instead we came across many orb weavers like the ones here. Seemed as if their webs were everywhere. Many of the webs contained a large female and a smaller male or males in some cases all vying for the females attention. The pair pictured here were quite taken with each other. Their mating dance went on for quite some time. He would run down the web towards her and some vigorous toe tapping would take place, then he would run away to the edge of the web only to return a few seconds later and repeat the process. In this picture you can see that he finally acccomplished his mission and managed to get away with his life as well.