Spider half-dozen

I was puttering in the garden yesterday and a spider rode her silk down from my forehead to the tip of my nose. "Hey! You've been ignoring us!" was the message.

Okay, okay, I get it. Sorry! So here are a few recent spider pics.

Cross spider, Araneus diadematus, with a sowbug wrap. That's a hefty meal!

Another, laying in wait over the flower bed just outside my kitchen window.

Cellar spiders, Pholcus phalangoides, (I call this one "Spots") are so elegant!

Except when they forget which leg goes where.

A roaming male, unidentified, searching for a mate on my bedroom wall. You know he's a male by the boxing gloves. And look at those fangs!

There! Am I forgiven now, spidey?

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Estaba trabajando en el jardín ayer cuando una arañita bajó, colgándose de su telaraña desde mi cabeza hasta la punta de mi nariz. Como si dijera —¡Oye! ¡Nos has estado olvidando!

Bueno, tiene razón. Así que aquí van unas fotos recientes de mis compañeras arañas.

Primera y segunda fotos: Arañas "cruz", Araneus diadematus, la primera con un taco de cochinilla. ¡Comida para una semana!

Tercera y cuarta: las arañas Pholcidae siempre son tan elegantes. Hasta que se les olvida cual pata va en cual lugar.

Quinta foto: una araña macho, sin identificación, cruzando la pared en mi recámara, buscando su media naranja. Se sabe que es macho por los guantes de boxeo que lleva. ¡Y mira esos colmillotes!

Y ahi lo tienes, arañita; ¿me puedes disculpar ahora?

Itsy-bitsy

This miniature spider was patrolling the wall over my desk. He froze in place when I approached. Thanks, Tiny!

Huge "boxing gloves" pedipalps show he's a male.

#Arachtober

It's mushroom (and bug) season

I was sure I'd seen a spider. I was searching through the new growth and the logging slash on a recently cleared site, looking for the last few spiders I need to complete the month of Arachtober. And I knew I had pointed the camera at one. But where was it?

It had been too fast for my shutter finger. I enlarged all my photos and peered at them, looking for even a trailing leg; nothing! But it wasn't wasted effort: I found spider food. Tiny bugs!

White and cream mushrooms. With bluish springtails, a couple of globular springtails (one brown, one orange), and a startling blue fly.

These mushrooms are coated with a jelly-like orange varnish.

Zooming in. A red-eyed fly above, and a tiny, patterned bug on the mushroom.

No critters on this beige mushroom.

Nor on these. They were all too busy on the creamy/orange ones.

A different species of orange mushrooms. The critter here is down on the piece of wood beneath them, too blurry to make out. But it's long, has two antennae visible, and a segmented body. I wish I'd focused on the wood, rather than the mushrooms.

And I eventually got my spider for today's Arachtober entry; he came to my door in the middle of the night.

Crane fly patrol.

Arachtober offering

It's Arachtober! Every October, I join a group of spider lovers on Flickr, each posting one arachnid photo per day until Hallowe'en. It's great fun, and the photos are worth browsing, even if you're not a spider fan. (You may become one after seeing some of our beauties!)

Spiders make traps for the unwary; webs and tunnels and cleverly camouflaged hideouts. And we, all unaware, fill our homes with traps for spiders. Bathtubs and shower stalls, kitchen sinks, washbasins, trash cans; anything with slippery walls, especially if it's baited with a hint of moisture at the bottom. Have you watched a spider caught in a bathtub? It flails away at the lower curve, trying to gain a grip on the cliff face, trying and panicking and trying and failing until some helpful human fishes it out and sets it free outside with a warning; "Don't do that again!"

Every morning, it seems, I lift another harvestman or spider out of the kitchen sink. Usually, they're fine, just frustrated. But recently, I found one drowned in a dish I'd left soaking after a midnight snack. (My bad!) I spooned him out and drained him on a paper towel, where he twitched once, as if to say, "I'm alive," and then lay limp and still. So I dried him with a fresh corner of the towel, and untangled his legs with a fine paintbrush. And went for the camera.

Steatoda grossa, still wet, deciding whether to live or die. But very clean.

10 minutes after the rescue, he's up and running.

All is well. He stops and looks back, as if to memorize the danger zone, then turns and leaves.

I haven't seen him since; he must have learned his lesson.

(I held these photos until I could post them first in the Arachtober pool.)

Heading north

In a few hours, I'll be on the road, seeing the traffic and smoke of the Lower Mainland fade away behind me. Hope, the Coquihalla, Nicola Valley, Spences Bridge, Cache Creek, Lac LaHache, Bull Canyon, Kleena Kleene, Tatla, Caribou Flats ... the names call to me; I must go. I'll be ending up, eventually, in Bella Coola for a few days, then turn towards home again; the names in reverse.

Crossing the Chilcotin. Photo from 2010.

A flattish spot on the Bella Coola hill. 2010, with smoke.

Part of the time, I'll be camping, with no access to the internet, or, in places, even to a cell-phone signal. I'll log in here when I can, store photos and stories when I can't. And I'll be back the first of September, in plenty of time for Rock Flipping Day.

When I pulled my suitcase out of its storage space, it tore the spider web it was attached to, and the owner came out to complain.

"Hey! That was my house! I built it with my own spinnerets!"

Yes. It's about time I got moving.

On the prowl

A male spider, looking for a mate, carrying his big boxing-glove pedipalps ready for when he finds her, stopped to rest a moment beside my desk.

So I took his photo, of course.

Spider and carpet fibers.

"Hello, there! Have you seen my girl?"

I think he's out of luck; I haven't seen any big females around yet this year.

On a mission

On the wall beside my desk, a male running crab spider made a thorough search, running up, down, across and back, looking behind shelves and furniture. He didn't find what he was looking for; I could have told him that and saved him the trouble. He was the only spider on that wall. The nearest female was outside, by the back door.

Philodromus dispar, adult male. About 5 mm. long, eyes to spinnerets.

The female he was hunting for is slightly larger than he is, and dressed in mottled light brown. Only the mature males wear black decorated with those whitish stripes down the sides.

They are hunting spiders, always on the move, chasing down their prey rather than sitting in a web waiting for it. But when breeding time comes around, the male forgets to eat and wears himself thin racing, racing, racing; looking everywhere for a mate. Does he know what he wants? Probably not; he just feels the need to run and look and look again. But he'll know her when he finds her.

On his way up again, just in case he missed her. The "boxing glove" ends of his pedipalps are another sign of a mature male.

He's examined that wall and the curtain at the window, and has moved on. Only a few metres left to go before he discovers the female's hangout. I wish him luck.

(Almost) Wordless

'nuff said.

Hard-scrabble existence - IRFD 2012

It's been a long, dry summer. Anywhere we are not watering, the ground is baked as tough as a high-fiber rye cracker, and looks as lifeless as a Martian desert. We (my grandson and I) set out to flip rocks in the vacant lot across the street without much hope of success. But there had been pools, the water retained by hard-packed clay, in June. And a shaded creek runs around two sides; maybe, maybe there would be something to see.

And we gave that big lot a good flipping; leaving no stone larger than a pair of fists and light enough to heave off the ground untouched. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Dry, caked soil; dry, flaked grass blades; dry blackberry canes, thorns at the ready. I ripped my legs in several places; will I ever remember to wear protective clothing? (Probably not.)

The creek bed was dry, even deep beneath the rocks. But on the edge, where some of the weeds were still green, we found life, at last.

Under a broken board; the wood held in a bit more moisture. One carabid beetle.

Next board; one tiny snail, probably dead.

And under a large rock slab, we found a spider in her web.

But look again at that spider. Look above her, on the upper left. See the pale tangle of legs, the remains of her recent molt? Now look below her; see the sunburst of legs? Another spider! It's not often we find two spiders in such close proximity.

The second spider has come out into the light.

The only thing that brings spiders together, even for a short visit, is sex. The one on the upper right is the female; her abdomen is large and round. The male, below left, is smaller, skinnier, and his pedipalps, or "feelers", have enlarged tips, visible in the photo as dark spots just in front of his mouth. He has excreted a drop of semen, and scooped it up with his pedipalps. He will carry this around until the female allows him to approach close enough to deposit it in her sexual organ, on the underside of her abdomen.

If he's lucky, he'll escape uneaten.

And another rock, another spider. Same species, much smaller.

Another rock. And a tiny spider, of the same species.

Back home, at the edge of the garden, where I've been watering, a colony of sowbugs sleeps on the underside of a rock.

I should have carried a shovel. Something has to be alive out there, besides spiders; the spiders are not starving. Maybe the other animals retreat deep down to where they find cool dampness while the sun shines.   I'll go and look one day soon.

The lure of plastic

A male Philodromus dispar spider moved into my spider house while it sat outside with the lid open, airing out. I closed it up and brought it in, but after a couple of days, the spider was unhappy with the arrangement. He kept running and running and running, never stopping, for hours. Looking for a mate, I guessed, and opened the top for him. He scampered up and out; I let him go.

On my desk, there's a plastic bottle of aerated water that I use to spray critters that need to be kept damp. When next I saw "Philo", he was climbing up the bottle. When he got to the top, he stopped abruptly, put his pedipalps down against the plastic, his rear in the air, not a customary pose for these active spiders. And then he just stayed put there, as though his pedipalps had been glued down. I shooed him along, and he moved an inch or two and repeated the pose, pedipalps to the plastic.

"Interesting stuff! Smells like ..."

He's a mature male, shown by the large "boxing glove" ends on his pedipalps*; he uses these to transport sperm to the female's genital pore. But why does he want to make contact with this particular plastic? Is there some chemical in the plastic that reminds him of a female's pheromones?

Now that I think of it, was it the smell of the plastic, just outside his house, that drove him frantic in the first place?

Questions, questions. I haven't found an answer.

After a bit, since he wouldn't leave the top of the bottle on his own, I shook him off by the outside door. In the morning, I found him on a vinyl chair in the kitchen.

*Alex Webb has an astounding photo of a male black widow's pedipalps; go take a look!

Come into my parlour ...

...Says the spider to the fly.

"Spotty" waiting patiently in one of his three webs.

Resident fly, still uncaught after 3 days.

Poor Spotty! He tries so hard! And he's so hungry!

We've shovelled, de-rooted,manured, raked, re-planted, re-potted, laid paving stones, and set out seeds all afternoon. And tomorrow (Sunday) I'll be at a two-year-old's birthday party on the far end of the Lower Mainland in the afternoon, followed by a visit to a newborn girl even farther away. I'll probably be too exhausted to post until late Monday. See you then!

Spider in a hurry

This tiny spider wandered across the kitchen counter.

 Topside

Underside

I had to photograph him in a pill bottle because he was so active. And fast! He's a male, and looking for a female, going by the swollen pedipalps.

I learned something, looking through BugGuide to see if I could identify him; male spiders often become emaciated while they're looking for a mate, because they don't take time to eat. The abdomen shrinks and shrivels. This guy was skinny; from the side, the belly is flat.

I released him outside the door and he raced away. Good luck, little one!