Whatever works

Meanwhile, since we're well into Arachtober, go see what we've posted already; 522 spider pics so far this month.

I've been looking at webs recently; here's one of my two from yesterday: 

Tidy web, catching the light, spider in the centre.

Pretty close to the cliché idea of a spider web; a wheel with spokes hanging in the open. But the spiders may have other ideas. Some make funnels, some float single lines over empty space (it seems mostly over front doors and forest trails, going by where I find them). Cellar spiders string webs haphazardly over walls and ceilings; jumpers trail a line behind them, like a bungee cord. And in the woods, some spiders are just plain messy.

Web on huckleberry.

Here, they catch all sorts of stuff, besides the insect (and other spider) prey they hope to eat. Maybe the by-catch serves as camouflage: the huckleberry web may have a spider. Or not; it's impossible to tell.

And then there are the old tree trunks, and the stumps; there's always a web, sometimes many. And they're always strung any which way, ragged, loaded with junk, dusty. Do they catch anything? They must; I often see leftover spider molts, the cast-offs of a growing, well-fed spider. The spiders don't often sit in their webs; they're in a crack somewhere, waiting to leap out on something that struggles, trying to escape.

Bottom of a stump.

This stump has everything: ferns alive and dead, moss, lichens, old leaves. And several spider webs. A spider molt, almost dead centre. There will be a spider or two hiding somewhere in all the tangle. I think I see a couple of legs, but I can't be sure.

An almost intact web. And a spider; can you see her? Look on top of the down-turned root for two legs and a bit of abdomen.

(A couple of these will go up tomorrow for #Arachtober Day 20.)

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Estamos llegando al final del mes de #Arachtober, cuando subimos fotos de arácnidos al grupo en Flickr. Vamos bien, con 522 fotos ya este mes; hay que ir a verlas.

Últimamente he estado mirando las telarañas: aquí sigue una de las dos que subí ayer.

Foto # 1. Una telaraña "típica", con las rayas y el espiral y la araña esperando en el centro.

Esta más o menos corresponde a la idea estereotipada de una telaraña. Pero las arañas pueden tener otros planes. Algunas hacen embudos o túneles; algunas cuelgan una sola linea cruzando un espacio vacío (sobre todo en frente de puertas, o cruzando senderos en el bosque, o así me parece según donde me quedo con la telaraña en la cara). Las arañas fólcidas cubren paredes y cielos de las casas casi al azahar; las saltarinas llevan tras sí una telaraña a manera de cuerda de bungee. Y en los bosques, algunas arañas construyen telarañas caóticas.

Foto #2. Una telaraña en un arbusto de huckleberry. Ha capturado muchas cosas, aparte de los insectos que quieren comer. Puede ser que la captura incidental, las hojas y palitos, sirvan de camuflage. Puede haber una araña en esta telaraña; ¿quién la podrá ver? Yo no.

Y luego hay los troncos viejos de los árboles y los tocones; aquí siempre hay una telaraña, a veces muchas. Y siempre están colgadas sin ton ni son, hechas trizas, cargadas de detritus, polvorientas. ¿Cazarán algo? Parece que sí; muchas veces veo una muda, abandonada por una araña bien alimentada, crecida. Las arañas estas no esperan dentro de la telaraña; estarán en una grieta cercana, listas para saltar cuando un insecto queda enredado.

Foto #3. Este tronco lo tiene de todo; helechos vivos y muertos, musgos, hojas muertas, líquenes. Y varias telarañas. Una muda de araña en el centro. Habrá una o dos arañas por allí, escondidas entre las grietas o la maleza. Creo que veo un par de patas, pero no puedo estar segura de ello.

Foto #4. Un topón con una telaraña casi entera. Y una araña; ¿la ves? Mira encima de la raiz que se dirige hacia abajo. Veo dos patas y algo del abdomen.

(En la mañana, subiré dos de estas para el dia 20 de #Arachtober.)

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.

Catching the light

 The sun shines on spider webs in a dark corner ...

Tidy spirals. She's a cross spider, Araneus diadematus.

Vibrating in the breeze, glimmering.

Another, in my nasturtium patch.

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Unas arañas han constuido sus telarañas en una esquina oscura, pero el sol les llega.

Las arañas son Araneus diadematus, la araña de la cruz. La araña en la tercera foto está esperando presa entre mis capuchinas.

Hidden treasure

It was all because of the skunk cabbage. I saw a patch of it through the trees as I drove past, and went looking for a trail entrance. I'd never visited Nunns Creek before; from the road, it looks like a difficult tangle of forgotten undergrowth, almost completely encircled by large commercial sites and weedy vacant lots. But I wanted to see if I could get near that skunk cabbage without rubber boots.

At a corner of the lot, behind a patch of untended, weedy shrubs, I found a sign and what looked like a trail head. I parked and went in. Weeds, broken trees, more weeds. And then - a patch of pink fawn lilies. Then more, dozens more, hundreds more, thousands more, all along a network of trails, going deep into the bush. In spots, they were joined by bleeding hearts. And, dotting this carpet of pink and green, a scattering of trilliums, white and pinkish.

A pair of pink fawn lilies, with their blotchy basal leaves, and a few bleeding heart leaves.

A young trillium, still small, very white.

An older trillium, pink. With a crab spider that I completely failed to see until I blew up the photo.

I circled around, walking down every branch of the trail system Except this one: it was barricaded.

More flowers tomorrow.

Traplines in the air

It's going to be a good summer for watching spiders. The rhododendrons and cedars on the sunny side of our lawn are festooned already with big webs. The spiders, female Araneus diadematus, aka cross spiders, are still tiny, barely an orange speck in the centre of each web. They'll grow; by the end of the summer some will be up to an inch across, fat bellies showing their success as trappers.

They hang, belly out, upside-down, in the centre of the web. One back leg holds a drag line attached outside the web. This spider has caught and wrapped some sort of fly. An early supper!

"It is common for a web to be about 20 times the size of the spider building it." Wikipedia

Another spider, still waiting for her prey.

These are seriously smart critters. Building a web isn't just a rote operation; every site has its special requirements, and the webs are more elaborate than the simple spiral and ray arrangement shown in children's books.

The spider launches a thread from the top of her chosen location, waits until it makes contact with another branch, then runs down it to glue it down well and reinforce it. She picks a centre and builds another ray out from there, then more until she's filled her space. Then she makes a small spiral in the centre, using non-adhesive silk, glued together where they cross the radials. This is her resting place and launch pad.

8 rounds in this spiral. Note the glue spots at the nodes only.

Then there's a gap, about twice the diameter of the inner spiral. What is function is, I don't know. Maybe it keeps the struggles of her prey out of her private space. Only she really knows.

Then comes the business part of the web. She fills most of the available space with more spirals, built first with non-adhesive silk, then replaced with the sticky stuff. (She eats the first lines; spiders recycle!) She leaves more dots of glue here, spaced randomly, not usually on the nodes.

Outer web. Note the glue spots. The rays are not sticky; the rest is.

And here's where her web differs from the standard drawing; every so often, along those regularly-spaced spirals, she breaks the pattern to make an X, sometimes a Y, sometimes a knot of angled threads. The spider at the top here has a large area like this near the inner edge of her trap; the second spider is a bit more restrained, sticking to a few simple Xs and offset sections.

I was inclined to think of these, at first, as mistakes, the spider losing her way briefly, getting confused. But every cross spider does this; it probably has some function. Maybe it's like the trusses in bridges and roofs, using the triangular shape to add more strength.

What went on in the spider's head? (Or belly, or legs, since her brain is too big to fit in that little cephalothorax, and she's outsourced it to several parts of her body, including the legs. Up to 80% of that little body is brain.) How does she decide it's time to change direction? Does she do the math? Or just sense some instability in the web and X it out?

Questions, questions.

As I sit here typing, a pinhead spider has been busy building a web on a sparrow feather beside my desk. She came down the wall, jumped the gap, and made a beeline for that feather, climbed it and dropped her anchor. How did she know the feather was there? How does she figure that's a good hunting spot?

And what will she be catching. She's so small I barely see her; does she see my desk crawling with little beasties that I can't see? Now I'm itchy!

Hangin' in there

I'm back; bruised and sore, missing a small chunk of jawbone, but I'm beginning to think I'll recover. Thanks for your good thoughts!

I found this spider last week, smack dab in the middle of the trail through the bush behind Cougar Creek. Luckily, the sun caught the web just right; I saw her first, and she didn't catch me.

Waiting, just at face height.

Zooming in, nose to nosefangs

I find it amazing that she can make sense of that tangle of lines, some dotted with glue, some stretching out to the salmonberry bushes on either side to support the web, some to stand on, at least one always held in a back foot to alert her to a catch, and a bunch of loose threads and knots. (I wonder what's the purpose for these.)

Jewelled web

I was chasing a spider to post to Arachtober; a tiny, wriggly, leg-waving spider, busy preparing her lunch. I was so engrossed that I didn't notice this one until I put my head through her web, entangling her in my hair.

She scrambled out, back to her broken web, and held her ground there at what used to be the centre, giving me a good side view of the glue dots along the silk threads.

Strings of pearly beads, pink, blue, and white

(Right-click on the photo to open it in a new tab and see the beads full-size.)

Spider and web

The blackberry thickets between the street and the White Rock beach are dying back for the winter. Berries, dingy black and shrivelled, hang under mostly-brown leaves. I found one berry bunch still glossy black and juicy. When I picked one, a spider ran out of it and across my hand. I didn't eat the berry.

This big cross spider has hung her* web at knee height between the path and the blackberries; as is their custom, just right to ambush an unwary beach-goer. I saw her first, though.

The blackberry canes are just far enough back to produce this bokeh.

I have joined the Flickr group, Aractober.

This group is similar to a 365 group, the goal is to post spiders to Flickr daily during October.

I don't think there's any purpose to this, other than just plain fun. And because October is a creepy-crawly-spider-ish month, what with Hallowe'en at the end. So: Arachnid/October.

Go see what's been posted already. Great photos!

*Mostly, I distinguish male spiders from females by the adult male's "boxing glove" pedipalps, but from this angle, they're hard to see clearly. On this female, however, the genital structures (epigyne) are unusually apparent.

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.