Hey, it's time for another installment of DG's Garden Spiders.
On my way back inside after faffing about in the yard I noticed that Orby (I decided to name it) was in the middle of her (I assume) web in broad daylight, which as I've said is highly unusual unless a hose is involved. I stopped to investigate why and found that she had caught and just finished wrapping the biggest prey item I've yet seen.
Spun in silk as it was I couldn't clearly idenitfy it and a moment later it kicked feebly one last time before becoming still. Orby was already slowly, with intermittent stops and starts, inching back toward her cactus base camp. She was like the Fremen on Arrakis avoiding sandworms, if you've read Dune. I went inside and grabbed my camera.
There she is moving back down while at the top is the wrapped meal for later. It's hard to take photos of small things floating in the air without focusing on the background but a close up can reveal what she caught.
You can see the stinger on the bottom along with faint yellow and black stripes. Orby managed to catch a bee. It's unfortunate because I've already noticed far fewer bees around this year without them blundering into spider webs. It's probably no coincidence that the silk wrapping seems to have avoided the sting.
Here're a couple more of Orby being somewhat less cute in close-up.
After taking some photos I noticed a smaller web running from Orby's cactus to the short white cactus next to the tall one that Orby uses as a strut. In effect this new web created, along with Orby's original, a double web barrier about 5 centimetres apart in the same air space. It doesn't make much sense for Orby to build a second web in direct competition with her first so I decided there must be another spider.
I found it sitting on Orby's cactus, but on the very top, whereas Orby sits about halfway down the side.
It's much smaller than Orby so I can't see distinguishing features to help me identify it on the net. Maybe it is young and will grow large enough to identify. It's legs are almost identical to the cactus spines in shape and colouring. And it seems to have relatively large chelicerae for it's size, if that's what the two bulbs in the following close-ups are.
I've dubbed this one Spiny but who knows if it will stick around long enough to be adopted as a pet. It might be an orb weaver, too.
I avoid spiders like the plague ;~;
We have worse things here than spiders. Three days ago I saw a spider wasp fighting with a spider. I was visiting Orby when I heard a buzzing and rustling behind me. I turned to see a bright orange and black wasp, about three centimetres in length, wrestling with a spider almost twice it's size (taking legs into account). The spider was grey and flattish with long legs so it was probably some sort of huntsman. They were struggling on a high ledge of my house before falling down. The wasp hit a low window sill while the spider fell a foot further to the ground. The spider then rocketed away across my yard and under the fence to the neighbours. You could tell how scared it was. The wasp hadn't noticed the escape and proceeded to spend a long time buzzing and hopping angrily around the area it last saw the spider.
That spider escaped a pretty grim fate. Spider wasps catch spiders much bigger than themselves then paralyze them and lay an egg on them so that their baby can eat it alive after it hatches. Apparently they are common but that was the first time I've seen one, though now I've seen them (probably the same one) every day for three days in a row. That first time was the only time I saw it with a spider and it happend too fast for me to fetch the camera. Not that I would have been eager to get close enough to take cool shots of a wasp. They are apparently non-aggresive, but I'd rather not take the chance of a wasp thinking I was trying to steal its baby larder.
Also, in case anyone is wondering/worried, rudimentary research indicates that Orby is too small for the wasp to bother with. I did notice the wasp nosing around in the ground around Orby's cactus the next day but Orby is fine. Either she really isn't worth attacking or she wasn't noticed.
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Topic: Spiders? Spiders. (Read 13970 times)