Wow, Battle of the Titans! Great picture (rated R for some violence). Nature at work. A little green worm/vacuum cleaner saved my roses from aphids earlier this year - not a pretty sight, but really effective!

It took me quite a while to figure out what dinner was, but now I think I know. I think it's an immature assassin bug. If I'm correct it's an example of one predator eating another.

Oh, no, my good guys are killing each other??? So did the assassin bug do the bud damage? And what is the green spider called? I see them all the time and have assumed they're not bad guys.

Sherry

I have these spiders too. There is one living on top of a bloom on a new rose that has produced one bloom and I would like to take a sniff but don't want to inhale a spider! I wish he would at least go underneath for a while!

Lynn

Sherry,

It looks like a green lynx spider to me. Great little guys to have in your garden!

I think the spider is a Green Lynx.

I was going to suggest an assassin bug based on the jointed beak.

hopefully they also eat thrips!

Oh, no, my good guys are killing each other??? So did the assassin bug do the bud damage?

If I'm correct, no, the bug didn't cause that damage to the buds (which damage looks fungal to me rather than caused by an insect).

As to who kills whom? Spiders like insects and neither know nor care what the insects have eaten for a living.

You take the good with the bad. You have a garden environment where two different sorts of predators can both be found, and where there was one of each there may well be more.

It's all good.

Plant sucking true bugs don't have such fearsome beaks.