Pinhead spiders, pinhead spider food

With the onset of fall weather, we've been hurrying to finish postponed summer gardening chores, and settle the gardens in for the rains. In the last three days, Laurie chopped down a small tree and we dug out its roots. By hand, digging and chopping, prying and scraping. I thought we'd never get it done. I've finished cutting down the summer's crop of ivy that was making a new onslaught on our evergreens. The rhododendrons are pruned. My shade garden is cleaned up, fertilized and mulched. The hawkweeds are no more.

Whew!

I was too tired to look at the blog yesterday.

This afternoon, the last thing I (thought) I would do before I quit for the day was to cut off a couple of old hydrangea flower heads whose stems had broken.

There were spiders among the drying petals. I went for the camera.

Worn out dark blue hydrangea

The spiders were all tiny, some barely big enough to cover a pinhead, some slightly bigger, but more mobile.

I snapped umpteen variants of this; Ma spider just slipping around to the far side of the stem.

And as I chased spiders, I found a whole community of critters, so small that I hadn't realized they were there. So that's what all the spiders have been eating!

Snail, a couple of millimetres across.

Another snail.

Whiteflies. About 1 - 2 mm. A pest, but they weren't too numerous. And winter is coming.

Baby American house spider. Probably eats whiteflies; they're about her size.

Another one. These were so small that I couldn't see what they were with the naked eye.

A small meadow spittlebug, Philaenus spumarius, about 1/4 inch long. Another of the critters that keep moving to the far side of the leaf.

A very small weevil that I couldn't identify. I like his back markings; the back side of a comic-book hawk? A Sasquatch in a rain cape?

Earwig hiding in the crotch of a flower stem. A composite; one photo had the head in focus, another had the tail. And none had the middle. And then the 'wig ran away.

This earwig was from a few days earlier, on a rhododendron leaf. I really want to get a good photo because I love the markings on the thorax. Try again!

This spider, and several others like her, fell out of the flower heads as I de-leafed them. They're very fast runners.

Chased but not caught: a flock of those orange flies with the red, red eyes. And I put my head, again, through a cross spider's web.

Five dozen babies

Baby spiders, that is. And aren't they cute?

Click on the photo to see them full-size. One has a happy face on his belly.

The babies are the first progeny of "Little Momma", an American house spider, Parasteatoda tepidariorum. She lives in a corner beside my patio door, and has another batch on the way.

Little Momma, with bag of babies and lunch.

She is the granddaughter of Fat Momma, who raised a brood a few feet overhead in 2007. I wrote at length about her then, and want to review a few of the questions raised back then.

Here's the series: Parts I - Spider Watching, II - Fresh laid eggs!, III - Taking Candy from a Baby, IV - We Haz Babies!, V - Baby Pictures, VI - Post-coital bliss, sort of, and finally, Pleased to Meetcha!

Some of the questions I was asking then were, what happens to the males? And, how long does incubation take? Will the egg cases survive over the winter?

• Fat Momma ate at least one of her mates. Little Momma has had three that I have seen. I caught her eating one.
• Fat Momma's first two egg cases and one of another spider took 25, 27 and 33 days. I first saw LM's eggs exactly one month before they hatched. So 31 -32 days.
• And Fat Momma's final egg case hatched the next March. LM's second case is just a week old; it may have to hang around over the winter, too.

I found it interesting that LM hung her egg cases, as did her grandmother, out in the middle of nowhere. But a week ago, when the weather turned cold for a few days, she hauled them both over against a wooden shelf, well protected from the elements, and tied them down there.

The babies are pale cream, with grey dots in varied patterns. In the photo, full-size, two eyes stare straight ahead. The other six are not visible. I expect them to hang around the egg case for about four days, then start wandering; they will be dark and shiny by then. I'll keep close tabs on them, and maybe even get a few portrait shots.

Oh, and "Congratulations, Little Momma! Your babies are beautiful!"

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Spiders, spider lunch, and a beetle too big.

Where there are moths, there are also spiders. Well-fed spiders. At the Stonewater on the Sunshine Coast, they are large and fat, their colours are bright and their webs full.

The cross spider, Aranea diadematus, digesting breakfast. One of many.

A smaller cross spider, showing off her bright coat.

Parasteatoda tepidariorum, the American house spider. (aka Achaearanea t...) Look at that round belly!

An unhappy Tegenaria. Grumpy, because I had just stolen his lunch.

A baby cross spider with an unidentified snack.

And this was (supposed to be) lunch for the Tegenaria. I untangled it from the web and set it free.

A Flower Longhorn beetle, Ortholeptura valida. Well over an inch long, not counting the antennae.

Another Longhorn, from Campbell River. Look at the shape of the compound eye; not quite rounded, and notched on the front end.

I found this next Longhorn a bit farther north, at the Saltery Bay ferry landing. I saw it through the window of the terminal office, and asked permission to go in and take a few photos. It's almost two inches long, solid, slow-moving, and harmless; the officer on duty was leaving it to make its way across the floor undisturbed.

Huge Longhorn beetle, Tragosoma depsarium.

I got right down on the floor with it, and it stuck out its mouthparts at me.

I couldn't find much information on this beetle, other than that it is a Holartic species, on the endangered list or extinct in parts of Europe, because it lives on decaying conifer wood in undisturbed forests. (How many of those can be found, these days? Even here in BC?) BugGuide has a few photos, one taken in Golden, BC, another across the border in Washington.

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Midnight survey

I was grumbling to Laurie, a couple of days ago, that there are hardly any bugs this year. Except for a plague of tiny biting black flies, he reminded me.

Something is definitely odd, though. Last summer, the evergreens across my lawn were festooned with hundreds of big cross spider webs. (Both the spiders and the webs were big.) This year, I've found fewer than a dozen, all tiny.

Last year, I had to put out crushed eggshells to stop the slugs. This year, the eggshell container is still full.

Last year, I was monitoring Fat Momma and Chica, my American house spiders, chronicling their doings and matings. This year, the final batch of eggs hatched in March, and a couple of tiny males set up their webs. And that was it. No females, no matings, no babies. And no photos.

Last year, my visitors included big brown moths, crane flies, assorted caterpillars, leafhoppers, lemon-yellow lauxaniid flies, bald-faced hornets and granddaddy harvestmen. This year, a moth or two, a pair of crane flies, no caterpillars, a few tiny harvestmen. The only flies so far are those biting black flies. And a few mosquitoes. (I could do without those.)

I am wondering whether that is a normal variation, or whether it is because of the changes in our weather patterns.

Almost a year ago, in September, I went out with a flashlight to see a big cross spider that built his web on our bicycles every night, and found the patio crawling with life. I've looked out at night this year, and rarely saw any more than a few pillbugs.

I decided to do a thorough search; I went out Tuesday night and last night with the lamp on an extension cord, and peered into every corner. With some success.

There were slugs. Several kinds of slugs.

Doesn't it look awfully snake-ish, coiled up? It does to me.

A light-coloured slug, eating something dried and red. Maybe an old earthworm.

A dark-brown slug, climbing the wall with a harvestman for company.

And a couple of kinds of pill bugs:

The ones that make pills.

And the ones that don't.

I thought this one was a pillbug until I saw the photo. Now I don't know what it is.


Besides these, I found an earwig or two, two snails, a tiny leafhopper on the rhododendron, and a couple of earthworms out for an evening stroll. No moths, no caterpillars.

There were a few spiders: the tiny cross spider whose web I broke, and a miniature cream-coloured one that never stopped running.

Fuzzy photo; the spider wasn't co-operative.

And -- and this made me happy! -- a female American house spider, possibly one of Fat Momma's brood. She was setting up shop at the crook of an old boat smokestack that I've had hanging around, and tying her web to the beak of a wooden shorebird beside it. Not a safe location, but I'll try not to disturb it.


There are a few small males in the vicinity; she should have plenty of suitors. I'll keep an eye on her, hoping for photo ops.

I also found several of these beetles. Out there in the semi-dark, they just showed up as brown blobs, so I brought this one inside to have his picture taken.


This is the same as the one that Chica caught last year. He's lucky I brought him in; when I went out in the morning, the new spider* had one of his relatives:

Beetle taco.

So there's life out there. But not nearly as varied or as numerous as last year. I hope it bounces back next year.

One last photo: a pile of stones I will be flipping the 7th of September. With a slug on the turtle.



*I'll have to find her a name. It's awkward to be always writing "the new American house spider".
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Pleased to meetcha!

The eggs have hatched!

Spider eggs, that is; Fat Momma's babies that she left in the corner over the winter.

(This will be Part VII of a continuing series on the life and times of an Achearanea tepidariorum (American house spider) family. Parts I - Spider Watching, II - Fresh laid eggs!, III - Taking Candy from a Baby, IV - We Haz Babies!, V - Baby Pictures, and VI - Post-Coital Bliss, sort of.)

I bought a new camera today. The first one, a year old, was the cheapest, skimpiest beginners' model; I've upgraded. A bit. To a Canon A720 IS. Still a cheap model, but an improvement.

I spent the afternoon and evening studying the manual and trying to get close-ups of a carpet beetle, the one I'd photographed earlier with the old camera. I still have quite a bit of work to do to find the right combination of lighting and lenses, but I did get a fairish shot or two.

Relaxing, finally, I wandered around, camera in hand, clicking away at difficult targets. I ended up outside, in the dark (2 AM), for the last trial before I went off to bed.


Hey, it does pretty good; I couldn't even see this planter, just aimed where I knew it was. I took several photos: the rhododendron, primulas in the garden, the hydrangea, an old sign on the wall.

Above the sign is the corner where Fat Momma left her egg cases. A dark, dark corner; I took a practice shot at it, too.

I downloaded the photos to the computer and looked at them; the egg cases came out clearly.

But one is different now; faded and rumpled. And down below, what is that?


Achearanea tepidiariorum. Fat Momma's latest baby. And half grown up already.

He/she has been around for a little while. At least, the remains of two good meals are hanging in the web.

Two dead, dried-up flies. Or mosquitos.

Welcome to the world, little one! May you live long and happily. Eat dozens of moths. And lay many eggs.

Post-coital Bliss, sort of

... at least for half of the happy couple.

Part of a continuing series on the life and times of an Achearanea tepidariorum (American house spider) family. Parts I - Spider Watching, II - Fresh laid eggs!, III - Taking Candy from a Baby, IV - We Haz Babies!, and V - Baby Pictures.

Ever since I first saw a timid male hanging around the edge of Fat Momma's web, I have been trying to catch them in the act of mating. No luck yet, but this is as close as I've come.

After the first egg case was laid, the male had disappeared. Whether she ate him or he was off gallivanting, I couldn't tell.

I kept my eye on her, all through the guarding of that egg case, and eventually another male (or the same one) showed up on the wall near her web. He stayed for a few days and disappeared, coincidentally at the same time that she produced another egg case. (And the same day that the first batch hatched.)

In the month since, a third male appeared, hung around a day or two, and was gone. And Fat Momma had a third egg case, the first still hanging there although it was empty.

I have been busy this last week, and didn't monitor her as closely as I could have. I hadn't seen the fourth male, nor was I aware of the hatching of the next round of spiderlings until three days ago; by then, they were probably about 2 days old.

And Fat Momma has a fourth egg case. And the male was still around. She was busy eating him. (Photo above.)

That question answered. She eats her mates.

(I wanted to confirm that it was her latest mate, and not a random visitor of another species, so I waited until she had finished with him, and fished him out of her web. A long wooden back-scratcher was handy for this job. I looked at the tangled, glued-together mess under my little microscope; yes, it was a small Achearanea. Her poor mate, who had sacrificed his all for love.) (And I have a photo, but I'm sure you don't want to see it. It ain't pretty.)

Laurie wonders how that works out; the successful suitor passes on his genes only once. Worse, I think, is that he has provided food for the female after the fact, after the eggs are laid. So he is getting her in shape for the next batch; the eggs fertilized by his successor. Seems counter-productive to me.

Any thoughts on that, anyone?

And I had wondered about incubation periods. So far, I have a sample size of 3; FM's 2, and Chica's 1. The first batch took 25 days, from July 26 to August 19th. The second batch ran from August 19th to Sept. 17th or thereabouts; 28 days, maybe 27. Chica's batch, laid the same day, has not hatched yet; that's 32 days and counting.*

What has changed? The weather. It is definitely colder these nights, cool in the daytime. And FM's web is in a sheltered corner; Chica's is around the outside corner, exposed to the wind.

Are the incubation periods dependent on the temperature? It looks like I'll have to watch right into next summer to find out.

One more thing; Wren had wanted to see baby spiders, and I couldn't get a decent photo. A few days later, one showed up on my doorpost, so tiny that I don't know how it was that I noticed it, just a black dust speck that caught the light and seemed to have legs. I was in a rush, and only stopped to take one photo. When I came back later, though I searched with a lens up and down the door, I couldn't find any spiderlings at all.

So here is a fuzzy baby pic.



Now to see if I can catch another baby of this latest batch.

*Update; Saturday morning. Chica's eggs are hatching. That's 33 days.

Baby pictures

When the house spider's eggs hatched, 5 days ago, (We Haz Babies!) Wren wrote in the comments that she had only seen masses of spiderlings, never single ones. I have been watching ever since, hoping to catch one on its own.

Difficult. For the first 4 days, they huddled together around the egg case, so tightly that it was hard to see them with the naked eye as more than a grainy mass.

I tried to get photos, but they were just too tiny and too inaccessible, up in the dark corner, far above my reach, even from the stepladder, for clear shots.

Day two. Moving around a bit.

Day three. With artificial light.

Over the last two days, the crowd has been thinning and spreading out; their numbers were dropping. I kept looking for strays, but any that left the group just plain disappeared.

Last night, with only a couple of dozen babies left, I went out after dark with a flashlight and examined the web. Ah-hah! Tiny moving dots showed up along some of the strands. It took some doing, but I caught two.

Day five. Momma and the last of the brood.

Those guys are tiny! Inside, under the light, I could barely see them with the naked eye; they could have been dust motes, for all I could tell. Only with my hand microscope (60x) could I see them with any clarity.

So; no photos of single spiderlings. Sorry, Wren.

At that age and size, their abdomen is a pale yellowish tan, the thorax reddish. But they have their mother's fat belly, the darker joints on the legs, and the beginning of a pattern, tiny black dots on the upper abdomen. And under the microscope, I can see their eyes clearly, something I have never managed with the mother; she always seems to have them shielded behind the legs.

When I had done examining them, I realized that I could have gotten others all over me, prowling around the web; they are so small, I would never have noticed. Suddenly, I could feel them crawling down my neck and up my arms. Nothing but my imagination, but still, I had to shower and change clothes and wipe down the desk with alcohol before I could settle down again.

But what an adventure their life is! So tiny, and walking all that long, long way out of the mother's web, out into the world where danger lurks at every corner. The trees across the lawn are festooned with the webs of Araneus diadematus, several orders of magnitude larger than they and more than happy to snack on a mouthful of baby Achearanea. They will have far to go before they find safe places to set up shop.

We Haz Babies!

American house spider babies, that is. (Background posts: Spider Watching and Fresh-Laid Eggs!)

The proud mother:

Fat Momma with newest eggs

The Achearanea tepidariorum family; Momma, babies and egg case

Spiderlings! Aren't they cute?

I've been checking these eggs morning and evening. They first appeared Monday morning, the 20th. Which makes the incubation period, from July 26th to yesterday, 25 days. That question answered.

And she has laid a second batch of eggs, so I'll be looking for those babes the middle of September.

Next questions: 1. how many of those spiderlings will survive? 2. And how long will they sit around their old case before they move out? (I just checked with a flashlight; they are still clumped in the same spot.)

About the males: back in July, a small male hung around the web for a week or two. Then he disappeared, about the time she laid those eggs. I wondered if he had been eaten. Last week, there was another, a bit smaller; after a few days he had competition, a second tiny male. I kept an eye on them and watched one make advances up to within an inch or so away, but then he retreated to the edge of her web again. Yesterday, there was no sign of either male.

Question # 3: Does she eat the males as soon as they dare to breed with her? Or when she's ready to lay eggs?

Around the corner, Chica has laid her own eggs, the same day. Hmmm...

Chica. I love this photo, against the light.

Next: Baby Pictures

Quiet morning, with plenty of company

Bug Season:
The weather has warmed up a bit in the last couple of days. We got some work done outside; pruned some bushes, pulled a few handfuls of weeds, moved a plant or two. The birds and bugs have been mostly quiet until now, but with the slight warmth they have come out of hiding. The chickadees have been at the feeder all day today, and mosquitoes are out for blood. Ripping up invading stems of dead nettle, I disturbed a nest of harvestmen (daddy long-legs); they took off running in all directions.

And a big cross spider, Araneus diadematus (I think), ousted Chica from her protected spot and guarded his own web there for two days. Last night, he moved; he started a large web anchored on Laurie's bike, the top of the garden wall and the screen door. When I stepped out in the morning, I walked right through it.

Spider web on my face. I hate that.

The central part of the web was intact; I exacted my revenge by setting up the tripod a couple of inches away and clicking at him. Finally, I removed the anchors from the bike and he scooted off, winding up the remains of his web in a ball as he went.

He's probably out there now, rebuilding.

While I had the camera and close-up lens outside, I went prowling. See what I found!

On the wall beside my bedroom window, a tiny brown moth, Scoparia biplagialis.

In a rolled up hydrangea leaf, a shy earwig:

Look at that jar-opener tail end!

Among the spores on a common "weed" fern, a leaf-hopper, so tiny that I didn't even notice it until I had the camera focussed. I think it's a privet leafhopper, Fiebriella. Around its feet, miniature orange bugs wandered here and there. I could barely see them with the naked eye. You can see one here, just a blurred spot of orange a bit to the rear of the leafhopper.

On another frond, I found a smaller hopper, whether a nymph of the same species or a different one, I don't know. And I think that's its cast-off molt beside it.

And finally, near Chica's new home high on the wall, a happy couple of lauxaniid flies:

I keep checking. No spiderlings yet in Fat Momma's web. How long is the incubation period? Anybody know? It's been three weeks already.