Arachtober, Day Three

This year has been a poor one for spiders, at least in the areas where I've searched for them. Many do turn up inside my house, but most of those are tiny moving specks, a few millimetres long at best. This one that showed up on my bedside table measures, fangs to spinnerets, about 3.5 millimetres. The pattern repeats on the table are just over 1 mm. each.

She'll go into the Arachtober pool for Day 3.

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Este ha sido un año con escasez de arañas, por lo menos en los sitios donde las he buscado. Dentro de mi casa, sí las hay, pero casi todas han sido arañas miniaturas, la mayoría midiendo apenas unos cuantos milímetros. Esta cruzaba mi mesa de dormitorio; mide, desde los quelíceros hasta las hileras (en el extremo posterior del abdomen) aproximadamente 3,5 mm. Cada elemento del diseño de la cubierta de la mesa mide tantito más de 1 mm.

Y la foto, la subí al grupo Arachtober para el Dia #3. 

Arachtober 2024!

So it's October already. Or I should say, Arachtober; the month when a bunch of spider lovers, 311 of us this year,  post our spider photos to the Flickr Arachtober group pool. One a day, these first couple of weeks, then 2, then 3 towards the end, going out in a blaze of glory at the end of the month. Some wonderful photos, beautiful, fascinating, illuminating; go see!

I posted the first of these two to the pool yesterday; the second is today's entry. A tiny, tiny spider, a mere speck, on the leaves of an African violet catching the early morning sunlight.

Making her way through a "meadow" of belly-deep violet leaf hairs.

Sun-bathing.

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Y no sé donde se fue el año, pero ya estamos en octubre. O mejor dicho, en Arachtober; el mes en que un grupo de aficionados a las arañas y otros arácnidos, que ahora cuenta con 311 miembros, subimos nuestras recientes fotos de arañas a la página en Flickr, Arachtober. Subiremos una foto diaria durante las dos primeras semanas del mes, luego 2 diarias, terminando al fin del mes con 3 diarias. Las fotos son asombrosas, bellas, educativas;  ¡hay que verlas!

La primera de estas fotos fue mi entrada ayer; la segunda la subiré al grupo en unos minutos. Muestran una arañita muy pequeñita, tomando el sol de la mañana en las hojas de mi violeta africana, Saintpaulia sp..

Lament

It has been a poor year for little beasties, the insects and wormies and garden crustaceans, the bees and the butterflies, the showy orange underwing moths; there were no cabbage white larvae eating my nasturtiums, just the deer. Forest trails were devoid of banana slugs. Moving plant pots in the garden exposed one or two sowbugs, rarely more. The annual summer invasion of ants through a crack behind my kitchen window failed to materialize. And the spiders, oh the poor, hungry spiders; they patrolled empty webs, stayed tiny, and guarded few new families.

Whether the cause is climate change, here showing up as dry weather, or the increasing pollution of our air and water, or our ongoing destruction of habitat, I can't tell. All of the above, maybe.

Whatever the cause, I'm missing the spiders. Cellar spiders arrange their webs in the corners of the carport, and, indoors, along the edges of the ceiling and under plant stands. But they're all tiny, almost transparent; some I've seen are only recognizable by a sudden sense of movement. Outside my door, a couple of fat house spiders, Steatoda sp., hung around for a while; one tried to raise a family, but I never found spiderlings. There's an undersized giant house spider that does her rounds in my bedroom, finding a cricket or two, maybe a stray crane fly. I did see a jumping spider in my garden once. Once.

And now it's October. Or Arachtober, as I know it. The time when several hundred spider lovers from around the world post our year's crop of spider photos to the group pool, (go look) one a day, then the last week, two a day, and three for Hallowe'en; some 40 photos each. And this year, I doubt that I'll make the count. There will be a few finds this month; it's the time to look for cross spiders, before the rains wash away their webs. But last week's sorting of photos turned up only 17 spiders.

(It's close to midnight. In desperation, I just went out to the carport with a flashlight and searched every crack. I found two very small cellar spiders and one tiny house spider eating a young sowbug. And a fragment of a spider molt. I'll take the camera out in daylight to see if they're still there.)

Still, with the help of a friend who scouted some out for me, and held a flashlight on a couple in deep shade, I've been able to add a couple of cross spiders, Araneus diadematus, to the Arachtober pool. These:

Female, in characteristic pose, head down.

Trapeze artist

Brownie on the edge of the deck.

About that first photo, I'll discuss some of the anatomy tomorrow.

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Ha sido un año pobre con respeto a los animalitos; los insectos, los gusanitos, los crustáqueos terrestres en nuestros jardines, las abejas, las mariposas, esas mariposas nocturnas con las alas secundarias anaranjadas; ningún larva de las mariposas "blanquita de la col" se comió las hojas de mis capuchinas; eso lo hicieron los venados. En los caminos entre el bosque, no aparecieron las babosas Ariolimax. Al mover las macetas en el jardín, solo salían a la vista una o dos cochinillas, casi nunca más. La invasión anual de hormigas que entran por una rendija tras la ventana de mi cocina no se produjo. Y las arañas, ah, esas pobres arañas hambrientas, cuidaban sus telarañas vacías, dejaban de crecer, no produjeron familias. 

Sea por causa del cambio de clima (aquí expresado por la falta de agua), o de la contaminación del ambiente, o por nuestra persistente destrucción de habitat, no lo sé. Puede ser todo en conjunto.

Sea lo que sea, extraño las arañas. Las arañas fólcidas arreglan sus telarañas en las esquinas y bajo soportes para plantas. Pero todas son miniaturas, y casi transparentes; algunas apenas se reconocen por la idea de movimiento. Afuera de mi puerta, dos arañas caseras Steatoda sp. duraron unos dias; una trató de formar una familia, pero nunca encontré sus arañitas infantiles. Hay una araña "gigante" pero no tan grande, que se ocupa en vigilar mi recámara, encontrando algunos grillos. Vi una araña saltadora en mi jardín una vez este año. Una sola vez.

Y estamos en octubre. O como lo llamamos, Aractober, el mes de las arañas. Es el mes cuando varios cientos de amantes de las arañas de todo el mundo suben fotos al grupo Flickr, #Arachtober, (haz clic), subiendo una foto por dia, dos en la cuarta semana, y tres el Dia de los Muertos, una 40 fotos cada quien. Y este año, creo que no voy a tener suficiente para terminar el mes. Habrá una que otra nueva foto este mes; es la temporada de las arañas Araneus diadematus, mientras no lleguen las lluvias fuertes. Pero al revisar mis fotos la semana pasada, encontré solo 17 fotos para subir al grupo.

(Es medianoche. Se me ocurrió ver si podía encontrar arañas en mi cochera a estas horas. Con una linterna busqué en todos los rincones. Encontré dos arañas fólcidas, muy pequeñas, y una arañita casera también muy chica comiéndose una cochinilla joven. Y un pedazo de una muda. Mañana, cuando hay luz, saco la cámara.)

De todas maneras, con la ayuda de una amiga que fue en búsqueda de arañas y detuvo una linterna para alumbrar unas que tienen sus telarañas en sombra densa, pude subir fotos de dos Araneus diadematus al grupo de Arachtober.

Fotos:

1. Una hembra en su postura característica. Haré comentario sobre ésta mañana.
2. La misma, haciéndose una trapecista.
3. Otra, la misma especie,pero café, mostrando el diseño de su abdomen.

A bump in the night

 Well, here we are; it's the 30th of September. In less than 24 hours Arachtober will be on us, and I'm busy sorting spider photos. Meanwhile, here's a photo of the house security staff. 3 AM, and she's alert, watching out for spiders and crickets and those nasty flappy crane flies. And maybe the occasional bear. The bears are not likely to come inside, but you never know; best to always be on guard.

"What was that noise?"

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

(Traditional Cornish prayer)

Although, around here, what goes bump in the night is usually Chia doing the rounds.

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Y aquí estamos. El 30 de septiembre ya, y en menos de 24 horas empieza Arachtober. Estoy muy ocupada organizando fotos de arañas. Por mientras, miren esta foto de mi guarda de seguridad. Las tres de la mañana, y Chia se mantiene alerta por si nos invaden arañas o grillos o esas revoltosas típulas. Tal vez puede aparecer un oso, también, aunque no es probable que entren en casa. Pero no hay que confiar; y gata prevenida vale por dos.

"De vampiros y fantasmas

Y bichos con patas largas

Y cosas que hacen ruidos en la noche

¡Sálvenos o Buen Señor!"

(Rezo tradicional)

Aunque, por aquí, la que hace ruidos de noche es Chia, en guardia.

Spider hunt

 I was looking for spiders near Miller Creek. Arachtober is only a month away, and in previous years, I've had some 50 spider photos to contribute. Not this year; I've hardly seen any spiders, and the few I've found have mostly been tiny. Down a quiet logging road — no traffic, space to wander from side to side, tangled understory plants — there should be spiders there. I found a broken spider web, no spiders.

But the dragonflies were driving me crazy. Big blue ones, tiny bluets, little red buzzers; they swarmed around me, always zooming away before I could aim the camera in their direction. Stand still, would you! Please?

One little brown one finally perched on a fern on the far side of a ditch. Close enough to focus on, and it stayed put for three clicks.

Yellowish face, brown leading edges on wings.

And then a young Steller's Jay began to follow me, half hidden in the trees. A teenager, maybe; smaller than an adult, calling, calling, calling; a "screee" sound. I thought he was annoyed at my presence, so I hurried back down the road. But even from a distance, I could faintly hear him, still "scree-ing".

Maybe he's saying, "Feed me!" I left some snacks by the car before I drove away.

My spider-hunting road.

All in all, even without spiders, it was a successful hunt.

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Buscaba arañas.  Apenas nos falta un mes para que empiece la colección de Arachtober. En años anteriores, he estado preparada con unas 50 fotos de arañas para contribuir. Pero este año, no. He visto muy pocas arañas, por lo general muy pequeñitas. Fui a buscarlas a un camino abandonado de madereros; allí debería poder ir de un lado a otro; no habría tráfico, y habría muchas plantas bajas; seguro que allí encontraría arañas. Pero no; ni una. Hallé una telaraña rota, eso fue todo.

Pero mientras, las libélulas me estaban volviendo loca. Pasaban volando rapidamente, haciendo círculos, cambiando de dirección al azahar; no alcanzaba ni a apuntarlas con la cámara. Había las libélulas azules grandes, otras pequeñas, las enallagamas, otras rojas o cafés. — ¡Por favorcito, deténganse un momento! — 

Por fin, una se detuvo encima de un helecho, no muy lejos al otro lado de la zanja. Y se quedó quieto hasta que le saqué tres fotos.

Foto: el caballito del diablo. Color café con la cara amarilla.

Y luego un arrendajo de Steller (chara crestada) joven me empezó a seguir entre los árboles. Llamaba y llamaba y llamaba sin parar, un chirrido persistente. Pensé que tal vez estaría molesto por mi presencia, y me apuré a regresar al coche. Pero siguió llamando; aun desde lejos lo oía.

Foto: el pájaro entre ramas. Tal vez pedía alimento, como los jóvenes lo exigen a sus padres. Le dejé un bocadito al lado del coche antes de echarme en marcha.

Foto: el camino donde buscaba arañas.

Al final de cuentas fue una buena búsqueda, aunque no hubo araña alguna.

Cold days, warm colours

In between searches for spiders for Arachtober, I stopped to look at fall colours in a friend's garden.

Burning bush; magenta leaves, orange berries, and the remains of flowers in in deep cherry-red.

Sit and rest a while in the shade of the Pyracantha

Weigela, flowers and ex-flowers.

And even the spiders come in fall tones! Araneus diadematus.

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Mientras buscaba arañas para el mes de Arachtober, me distraje observando los colores de otoño en el jardín de una amiga.

1. Euonymus alatas, el arbusto ardiente. En esta temporada luce las hojas brillantes en tonos de magenta, las frutillas anaranjadas, y los restos de las flores en un color de cerezas.
2. Siéntate un rato en la sombra de los pyracantha con sus frutas rojo/anaranjado.
3. Weigela, aun cuando pierde las flores mantiene la forma de estrella con tintes de color de rosa.
4. Hasta las arañas se presentan en colores de la temporada. Esta es una araña de la especie Araneus diadematus, o sea araña con corona, por el diseño de su abdomen.

Reach for the skies

 Archtober is going strong. Check out the group on Flickr; amazing spidery photos!

This was my entry for today, the 7th:

High hopes.

This was last week. I checked again today; she's still there, fat and happy.

A Skywatch post

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Seguimos en el mes de Arachtober. Hay que visitar el grupo on Flickr; ahí verás fotos asombrosas de arácnidos.

Esta fue mi entrada para el dia de hoy, titulada Grandes Esperanzas. La foto es de hace una semana. Volví al sitio hoy, y la araña sigue allí en su telaraña, gorda y feliz.

Un post para Skywatch.

Arachtober 2021 is upon us

It's Spider Time! Arachtober! Every year, for the month of October, a group of spider lovers, 299 at last count, post one arachnid photo per day to the Arachtober Flickr Pool.

This is my entry for today:

Cross spider, Araneus diadematus, with lunch, a rolled-up ball of goodies.

Check out the pool; there will be great spider (and other arachnid) photos to see all month.

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¡Es la hora de las arañas! Cada año, en el mes de octubre, un grupo de amantes de los arácnidos, que por el momento suman 299, suben una foto por dia al grupo en Flickr Arachtober.

Esta araña fue mi contribucción para el dia de hoy; una Araneus diadematus, con su albóndiga de moscos enrollados.

Si te gustan las arañas y otros arácnidos, o si quieres conocerlos, hay que visitar la página en Flickr; habrá muchas fotos nuevas todo el mes.

Happy, spidery Hallowe'en!

 Have a happy, spooky Hallowe'en!

Cabin window, Lake Roberts. Spider extra.

Last day of Arachtober!

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¡Qué tengan un Hallowe'en muy pavoroso! (Y feliz, por supuesto.)

Esta es la ventana de una cabaña abandonada en el lago Roberts. Con araña añadida.

Hunter in the dark

It's Arachtober! That time of the year when a bunch of us post photos of spiders on our Flickr group, one a day at first, ending up at five a day in the run-up to Hallowe'en.

It's been a poor year for spiders. I'm always on the lookout for them, and store any photos I get in an #Arachtober file. This year I ended up with only 26 photos, mostly of small cellar spiders. I went out a couple of days ago to look for more.

It was late afternoon when I started; the sun was shining, but within a few minutes the clouds closed in, with that dull slate grey that shuts out all the light. It made spider hunting difficult, and I found a few, but it was so dark that they were visible mostly as fast running specks.

After sunset, on my way home, I stopped at Roberts Lake cabins, at this time of year mostly empty. Abandoned human sites are good spider habitats. Wandered around, taking photos with flash of any site that looked likely to house spiders, with little luck.

Then, in a dark alley, I almost walked straight into the largest web I've seen in ages. And the largest, fattest, spikiest, happiest spider. (Happy, both she and I, that I didn't ruin her web.)

Araneus diatematus, the cross spider. She's been in a fight and lost two legs.

Most of the web, Hints of cabin steps and sky between trees behind.

Getting closer. Such spiky legs!

And I went on my way rejoicing. May her hunting be fruitful!

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Es el mes de Arachtober, ese tiempo del año en que un grupo de locos subimos fotos de arañas a Flickr, una foto por dia por ahora, llegando a cinco por dia al final del mes.

Este no ha sido un buen año para las arañas. Siempre estoy al pendiente, buscando arañas dondequiera, y guardo todas las fotos más o menos buenas en un archivo, pero en este año solo logré acumular 26 fotos, la mayor parte arañas fólcidos chicas.

Así que salí el otro dia en caza de más. Era un poco avanzada la tarde cuando salí, pero el sol brillaba. Y en unos cuantos minutos, se encerró todo en una nube de esas pesadas, oscuras, que ponen todo en penumbra.

Sí, encontré arañas, pero con la oscuridad, apenas salían a la vista como puntos negros en movimiento. Ni modo.

Después de la puesta del sol (¡como si pudiera ver tal sol!), camino a casa, paré en unas cabañas en las orillas del lago Roberts. Las construcciones humanas abandonadas son un buen habitat para arañas, y la mayoría de las cabañas están vacías en esta temporada del año. Di unas vueltas, sacando fotos al azahar, con flash, de cualquier sitio que parecía buen lugar para encontrar arañas. Poca suerte.

Ya que me regresaba, desanimada, al coche, pasando entre una cabaña y la barda, casi me di con la cara con una araña grande, gorda, llena de puas, y muy feliz en su telaraña enorme.

Es una araña "corona", Araneus diadematus. Me permitió sacar fotos sin moverse, y luego seguí mi camino feliz. ¡Ojala que en recompensa, a mi amiga araña se le arrimen muchas moscas gordas!

Where have all the critters gone?

For some reason, unexplained, this is not a spidery year. Nor has there been the usual insect population, which I would expect when there are fewer spiders to prey on them. I can't remember when I last saw a mosquito. Which is pleasant when you're trying to sleep, but worrisome.

I haven't seen any moths since the ones we followed in the summer. There was a cabbage white butterfly around my flowers last month. Not a flock of cabbage whites, as I would expect.

One singing cricket. Half a dozen crane flies. A few days of green shiny flies. A dozen fruit flies hovering around my old bananas. Beetles? No. Not even ladybugs. I remember seeing one black beetle in the lawn a few weeks ago. It's western conifer seed bug season, when they start moving inside to find a warm spot to spend the winter. There have been none so far this fall.

No wonder there are so few spiders! There's nothing for them to eat.

It's Arachtober. As usual, I collected spider photos for it all year; I needed 45 to post this month. I ran out last week.

I did a thorough inventory of my house, the carport, the flower beds and the lawn. In the house there are cellar spiders, mostly tiny. Their prey seems to be entirely other cellar spiders and one or two little flies.

In the carport: one cross spider, two small unidentifiable spiders, in hiding. In their trash, wood bug remains. And more cellar spiders.

In the flower beds; one cross spider. No jumpers.

I combed spots on the lawn with my fingers, hoping to disturb something small and leggy, as usual. Nothing. Green grass, creeping Charlie, no bugs, no spiders.

No wonder there are so few birds! There's nothing for them to eat.

What is going on?

It's not as if I were in a heavily-polluted area. The street is residential, with large lots backed with bush, in a narrow strip of housing between ocean front and uninhabited forest. There is no heavy industry nearby, nor farms spreading insecticide.

I went to Oyster Bay and explored the usual spidery spots; cottonwood trunks, rolled leaves, old fences, logs on the dunes, the public washrooms. I found a half dozen spider egg cases in over an hour of searching.

I stopped at a disintegrating shack along the shore. Inside (one and a half walls are gone) there were spider webs. No live spiders. No insects.

I turned over boards and pieces of log on the ground around the shack. Wood bugs. A few, but it was good to see something moving.

And I found two spiders. Alive, and busy raising families. Very nice. But; two? When there should have been two hundred?

Something is wrong.

Here are the two spiders:

Spider # 1, on the bottom of a broken piece of log. She has two egg cases, stacked, and full of babies. There's a small slug and three mites for company.

Spider # 2. In the crack between two broken logs. She's guarding her brood, still in the egg sacs.

Her egg sacs. If you look closely, you can see the spiderlings inside, even a few little legs.

I replaced the wood very carefully, not wanting to disturb either the mothers nor their babies. But at best, a dozen or so spiderlings will survive.

 Among a litter of a hundred baby Wolf spiders, usually around one percent survives to adulthood. That’s one out of a hundred. Those are pretty lousy odds if you are a young spider trying to make his/her way in the world. (Quora)

There are still two Arachtober days to go. I have no spider photos left. Unless I use the rubber dollar store spiders I bought, just in case.

Overrun with legs. And little fangs.

Things get kind of tense around here towards the end of October. Or, better said, "Arachtober", when we spider-fanciers post one photo per day of spiders to the Arachtober group page on Flickr. The last week of Arachtober, this week, we're posting two a day.

And that's where it gets stressful. I run out of spiders before the end of the month. This year, I have plenty of spiders, but they're all the same species; cellar spiders, Pholcus phalangioides. I crawled around my house today, searching in all the corners, on the underside of the furniture, around the baseboards, behind the plants; cellar spider, cellar spider, family of cellar spiders, more cellar spiders. The only other spiders I found were the sad remains of cellar spider lunches.

It has been raining and blowing, but I went outside and looked; there had to be at least one other spider somewhere! No. Only more cellar spiders. I think they've eaten everyone else.

Cellar spider female eating her unlucky mate.

Another cellar, eating the last of the big house spiders.

Cellar spiders look delicate and flimsy, and they're usually small, but somehow they're able to capture and eat the largest and hungriest of their relatives. And huge crane flies, many times their size and weight.

Today's cellar spider, just hanging out.

And another one from this afternoon, eating something small.

I'm going to end up posting rubber spiders from the dollar store if this keeps up.

Unlucky in love

He tried, he hung around, he brought her presents, maybe, but ...

She ate him, anyhow.

Cellar spider, female, with male (see his big pedipalps in that package).

Or maybe it was not bad luck; he was being the ideal father, sacrificing himself, even to his precious body fluids, to ensure the well-being of his children. She will now lay her eggs, strong and healthy, nourished by all that nutritious spider juice.

He's a hero!