Spiders Show: Spiders

And here’s my first offering.

This fellow was lurking on my bedroom wall for 3 days, then he disappeared (which caused me to recall the last Huntsman I had indoors, which laid its eggs in my backpack which was in my closet... normal behaviour is under bark or leaves on the ground... OUTSIDE! I wont go into the hatching and wandering of hundreds of baby huntsmen all over my room). Anyway, he turned up again today so I put my ebay-acquired spider catcher to use for the first time in a year, and now Mr Huntsman is safely ensconced on a tree in my front yard.

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I spent some considerable time over the summer attempting to photograph one of two crab spiders I'd found on umbellifer plants growing along the farm track outside my cottage. These are ambush hunters. It's the female I've photographed, she's about 10mm long. In the UK they have no common name, so Misumena vatia it has to be. I believe in the USA they are known as Golden Rod Spiders when they will be yellow in colour. White is the default colour but they can change to yellow by releasing yellow coloured fluid held in their body that fills cells just under their skin. I spent a long time trying to capture the moment they caught a prey item but failed, twice I came back after taking a break to find she'd just caught something. Various cameras and lenses were used.

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Barrie
 
I spent some considerable time over the summer attempting to photograph one of two crab spiders I'd found on umbellifer plants growing along the farm track outside my cottage. These are ambush hunters. It's the female I've photographed, she's about 10mm long. In the UK they have no common name, so Misumena vatia it has to be. I believe in the USA they are known as Golden Rod Spiders when they will be yellow in colour. White is the default colour but they can change to yellow by releasing yellow coloured fluid held in their body that fills cells just under their skin. I spent a long time trying to capture the moment they caught a prey item but failed, twice I came back after taking a break to find she'd just caught something. Various cameras and lenses were used.

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Barrie

She’s pretty :). We have a similar one here, but the plants they used to hide in, in my yard, have died for lack of attention, so currently none around.
 
Is this another one of those Aussie arachnids that can kill you in 30 minutes flat?
Haahaha! No, they build their webs over paths and in gardens, exactly at face level, so when you come in at night, you get slapped in the face by the web and the spider. I am always armed with a torch and a big stick to move the web to someplace else. Don’t know what Ray does :)

We have lots of big hairy spiders but only a few are killers and most of those arent hairy :)
 
Don’t know what Ray does
That fellow works to hard putting his web together, we felt compelled to leave all that hard work untouched, even moving sideways when walking past to make sure the net isn't broken. For him/ her start again from square one would be too much of a shame. It is interesting watching him/ her come out from the bush into the web to pickup whatever's been caught up in there and then head back into the bush. They move with haste you know, it's like watching a dog scamper back to the kennel.
 
That fellow works to hard putting his web together, we felt compelled to leave all that hard work untouched, even moving sideways when walking past to make sure the net isn't broken. For him/ her start again from square one would be too much of a shame. It is interesting watching him/ her come out from the bush into the web to pickup whatever's been caught up in there and then head back into the bush. They move with haste you know, it's like watching a dog scamper back to the kennel.
Just move the web, hopefully without breaking it. I find that if you can move the anchor points to somewhere that *you* find acceptable, after a couple of days, the spider learns not to hang where your face will be, later. They are quite fascinating, aren't they. Sadly, they don't seem to survive for much more than a summer or two... and those horrid Indian Mynas find them to be quite tasty...
 
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