Two styles of web

 And three more spiders. These are from the forested hillside going down to Elk Falls.

"Gonna catch me a tourist." Cross spider, Araneus diadematus in her tidy web.

Bycatch.

Messy  web, but efficient. Catches the light and Douglas-fir needles, anyhow. Find two spiders.

These messy web makers may be, according to iNaturalist (not confirmed), Bowl and Doily spiders, Frontinella pyramitela; they make a tangled web with a denser area in the shape of a bowl (here upside-down),  and hang underneath it, waiting for drop-ins.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Y otras tres arañas. Estas construyeron sus telarañas al lado del sendero que baja por el bosque hacia las cataratas Elk.

1. "Me voy a capturar un turista." Araneus diadematus. Estas hacen una telaraña muy geométrica.
2. Captura incidental.
3. Una telaraña bastante desordenada, pero sirve su propósito. Aquí ha capturado la luz y algunas hojas de abeto de Douglas. Y hay dos arañas; ¿las ves? Estas arañas pueden ser, según iNaturalist (pero sin confirmación todavía), Frontinella pyramitela; hacen una maraña de seda con una porción concava más densa, y se cuelgan debajo, esperando a que algún insecto caiga en la trampa.

Cat's eye spider

I haven't posted anything here for a couple of weeks, while I was busy adding spiders to the Arachtober pool. The last one has been a tiny cellar spider I found "drowned" under the sink protector in my kitchen, and she sent me on a search for more info, information beyond what goes into the Arachtober pool.

Here's the story:

I lifted the sink liner, and there she was, lying on her side, all the legs stuck together, not moving. But you never know; spiders are tough. I picked her up, gently, by the legs, and put her on a bamboo towel to dry. And went for the camera.

(If you've been following along in the Arachtober pool, you've seen these photos.)

Cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides, female.

She's twisted off to one side, but at least I got her legs untangled.

With her in that position, and not moving at all, I was able to get a good look at her eyes. She has eight (not all the spiders in this family are eight-eyed; some have only six.) And they're arranged in three clusters. Two with three eyes, one of which is somewhat crescent-shaped, and a pair together in the centre.

I was wondering about the anatomy of these eyes. Jumping spiders have front-facing eyes that don't seem to move, but with the right lighting (and a good lens) you can see that inside, the eye is a movable tube, with a lens at either end and then the retina behind all that. So the eyes don't seem to be moving, and don't alert the prey, but they still roam, even separately, scanning the area, finding their target, and gauging distance before they leap. Are cellar spider eyes set up on the same plan?

Google, google, google. Nothing. I found studies of the hairs on their legs, of the spinnerets, of the circulatory system — did you know that under a microscope, you can see the moving blood cells in her legs? (AnimalDiversity) — but no internal eye structure. It's probably out there somewhere, but I haven't found it. Yet.

But there's this: 

These spiders have at the back of the eye a reflective membrane called a tapetum. It is this surface that aids in night vision and causes their eyes to reflect light and shine in the dark, like a cat’s eyes.  (Cirrusimage.com)

Look at the second photo above, and also the fourth, scrolling down; you can see this clearly.

Here she is recovering, has straightened herself out and raised her legs, ready to walk.

Top view. Notice the mirror-like eye?

Before she was ready to move on, she allowed me to come in close to her face.

Eyes, fangs, pedipalps, and knobby knees.

Zooming in; she's still sort of sleepy. That didn't last.

She was starting to move about. I transferred her to a fruit bowl near a warm light. Half an hour later, she was gone. I found her the next day, hanging under my kitchen cabinet in her new web.

Waiting for dinner now.

I let her stay there; after getting up close and personal with her, I couldn't deny her house room.

In my search for eye anatomy, I ran across a few interesting tidbits:

I was watching to see if I could catch her in the act of grabbing her dinner, but she didn't react as I had expected. Instead, when a fruit fly touched a leg, instead of grabbing it with her fangs, she immediately jerked several legs. With no luck the times I saw her, but judging by the frass under the web, she's been eating well.

From Wikipedia: The spider patiently waits until the exact moment at which the prey touches one of its legs. Then, the P. phalangioides spider quickly immobilizes its prey by using its legs to wrap it up in layers of silk. Its long legs give it plenty of distance from the prey to avoid being bitten in retaliation. After immobilizing its prey, P. phalangioides can administer their venomous bite to the prey and consume it.

(She's a spider hunter; this explains the mention of a retaliatory bite. She can catch and eat spiders much bigger than herself. This is how. Her venom is relatively mild, but good enough on an already tied up subject. She is still cautious, biting her prey on the leg, away from its fangs, and allowing its circulatory system to do the rest of the work.)

P. phalangioides is capable of clinging onto their web with two of their legs while the rest of their body leans out of the web and shoots silk in the direction of the prey to subdue it.

 Her web is not sticky, like those of some other spiders; instead, it is messy and tangled and extends for sometimes quite a distance. The mess is enough to temporarily slow down an insect, and she dashes over to immobilize it.

When a prey is caught, the spider rapidly wraps it in the silk using the second and third pair of legs to rotate it and the fourth pair for leading the thread coming out from the spinneret glands. Particularly big preys are secured with tie rods anchored on the highest part of web. (Then) the preys are killed with a venomous bite and can be eaten at once or conserved. (Monaco Nature Encyclopedia)

She also may invade webs, sticky webs, of other spiders. No problem. For her; not for the invadee.

When it walks on the web it’s invading, the legs of the skull (Note: alternate name) spider may occasionally remain entangled. In such case, it bites off the silk and cleans up the leg, before eliminating the adhesive piece of the web and replacing it with its own thread. (Monaco Nature Encyclopedia)

And she looks so delicate!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

No he subido nada a este blog por un par de semanas, mientras me ocupaba subiendo fotos de arañas al grupo de Arachtober en Flickr. La última araña fue una arañita fólcida que encontré y que parecía estar ahogada bajo la estera de mi fregadero; me inspiró a buscar más información, más de lo que pude subir a Arachtober.

Esto es lo que pasó:

Levanté la estera y allí estaba en el agua, reposada sobre un costado, con todas las patas unidas, estiradas. No se movía, pero las arañas son duraderas, y la recogí con cuidado, tomándole de las patas, y la puse sobre una toalla de bambú para secarse. Y fui a traer la cámara.

(Si has estado siguiendo las fotos en Arachtober, ya habrás visto estas fotos.)

Fotos:

1. La cabeza de una araña Pholcus phalangioides, hembra.

2. Está torcida, con la cabeza a un lado, pero por lo menos logré separar las patas.

Ya que ella se quedaba quieta, sin moverse, pude fijarme en sus ojos. Tiene ocho. (Algunas de las arañas de esta familia se limitan a seis.) Estos ocho ojos se arreglan en tres grupos: dos con tres ojos, el tercero en forma de media luna; y dos ojos juntos en el centro de la cara.

Me preguntaba si estos ojos serían como los ojos de las arañas saltarines; éstas tienen ojos que parecen fijos, pero por dentro forman un tubo con una lente en cada extremo, y luego, atrás, la retina. A la vista, los ojos no parecen moverse, y así no espantan a su presa, pero en verdad se dan vueltas, a veces por separado, buscando presa, ajustando la distancia y el ángulo del salto. ¿Y los ojos de las fólcidas?

Busqué y rebusqué en Google. Nada. Encontré estudios sobre los pelos en las patas, sobre las hileras, sobre el sistema circulatorio — ¿Sabías que puedes ver las células sanguíneas moviéndose dentro de las patas bajo un microscopio? (AnimalDiversity) — pero no vi nada sobre la estructura interna de los ojos. Probablemente habrá algo que no hallé. Más tarde, tal vez.

Pero hubo esto:

Estas arañas tienen al fondo de los ojos una membrana reflectante, llamada el tapetum. Esta superficie ayuda en la visión nocturna y hace que sus ojos brillen en la oscuridad, al estilo de los ojos de un gato. (Cirrusimage.com)

Mira la segunda foto, arriba, y también la cuarta, abajo; allí se ve el reflejo de la luz.

Foto #3: aquí empieza a recuperarse; se ha enderezado y ha levantado las patas.

#4: Vista desde arriba. ¿Ves el ojo reflejante?

#5: Antes de estar lista para caminar, me permitió acercarme a su cara. Se ven aquí sus ojos, los pedipalpos, los quelíceros, y las rodillas bultosas.

#6: Acercándome aun más. Todavía un poco dormida. No duró mucho.

Empezaba a moverse. La puse a descansar en un plato de frutas cerca del calor de una lámpara. Media hora más tarde, se había ido. Al otro dia, la encontré en su nueva telaraña, colgada bajo uno de mis gabinetes de cocina. Después de meterme tanto en su vida, no me sentí con autoridad de negarle espacio para vivir; ahí se queda.

Foto #7: En su telaraña, esperando su presa.

Buscando eso de la anatomía de ojos de araña, encontré otros datos interesantes:

Miraba para ver si la podría sorprender en el acto de capturar su presa, pero no actuaba como yo lo había esperado. Cuando una mosca de la fruta, Drosophila melanogaster, se le acercaba hasta tocar una de las patas largas, no intentaba atacarla con sus quelíceros venenosos, pero de inmediato sacudía varias patas. No tuvo suerte mientras yo observaba, pero veo que se ha estado alimentando bien, por los sobrantes que ha dejado debajo de la telaraña.

En Wikipedia, vi esto: "La araña espera pacientemente hasta el momento preciso en que la presa toca una de sus patas. Entonces la P. phalangioides rapidamente inmoviliza su presa, usando las patas para envolverla en capas de seda. Sus patas largas la permiten mantener suficiente distancia de la presa para evitar ser picada por venganza. Después de inmovilizar la presa, P. phalangioides le inyecta su veneno a la presa y la come.

(Es cazadora de arañas; por lo tanto se menciona la posibilidad de la defensa por medio de una picadura. Puede cazar y comer arañas mucho más grandes que ella misma. Así es como lo hace. Su veneno no es muy fuerte, pero sirve bien cuando la presa ya está firmemente atada. Sigue actuando con cuidado, picando su presa en las patas (de la araña presa), lejos de sus quelíceros, dejando que la circulación sanguínea termine por preparar su comida.)

P. phalangioides es capaz de colgarse de la telaraña con dos patas mientras que el cuerpo se estira fuera de la telaraña y dispara seda en la dirección de la presa para atraparla.

Su telaraña no es pegajosa como las de otras arañas, en cambio, es enredada y se extiende por buena distancia. Es suficientemente densa como para detener la presa por unos momentos, suficiente para que P. phalangioides llegue a envolverla en su seda.

Cuando se atrapa alguna presa, la araña la envuelve rapidamente en su seda, usando la segunda y la tercera pares de patas para darle vuelta y la cuarta par de patas para guiar la seda procedente de las hileras. Presas especialmente grandes se fijan con tirantes conectadas con la parte superior de la telaraña. Luego se mata la presa con una picadura venenosa, y o se consume al momento o se guarda para más tarde. (Monaco Nature Encyclopedia)

Puede también invadir telarañas de arañas de otras especies, telarañas pegajosas, sin problema. Para ella, por lo menos.

Cuando camina en las telarañas invadidas, puede ser que las patas de esta araña se enmarañan. En este caso, muerde la seda y limpia la pata, antes de eliminar ese tramo de telaraña, sustituyendo en su sitio algo de su propia seda. (Monaco Nature Encyclopedia) 

¡Y se ve tan frágil!

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.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.)

Too bad the spiders were so tiny

And more pink:

I picked these up in a garage sale 4 years ago. They keep flowering in their pot every spring.

Sea pink, Armeria maritima. Aka thrift, sea thrift. 

It grows wild near the shore, on cliffs and in sandy soil. It doesn't mind a bit of salt. There are three sub-species growing here in BC. I think this may be ssp. californica, because the leaves, seen under a loupe, are smooth, hairless.

In their full-sun spot on the steps. Spiders not visible.

(I'm slightly crazy; I wasn't sure about the sub-species, so I had to go out and bring in the pot to examine it. It's the middle of the night, and I disturbed three miniature spiders, yellow and black, in their webs on the stems of the flowers, so tiny that I had to examine them under the loupe; even with the normal 10x magnifying lens, they were still just tiny dots, and the webs were invisible. I took them outside again, very carefully, so as not to disturb the webs.)

~~~~~~~~~

Otras flores color de rosa. Estas son clavelinas de mar, que compré en una venta de garage hace 4 años. Cada primavera vuelven a florecer.

Crecen en la orilla del mar, en tierras arenosas o entre rocas. No les hace daño un poco de sal.

Su nombre científico es Armeria maritima, y tienen tres sub-especies aquí en BC. Creo que este es ssp. californica, porque las hojas, vistas con una lupa fuerte, son lisas, sin pelos.

Y soy un poco loca; no sabía por cierto a cual de las sub-especies pertenecía, así que salí, a media noche y en calcetines, para traerme la maceta a donde la podría examinar encima de mi escritorio. Y porque es noche, había tres arañitas, arañas tan miniaturas que las tuve que examinar con la lupa. Bajo mi lente de aumento normal, a 10x, todavía eran puntitos pequeños. Con la lupa más fuerte, se veía que eran amarillas con una flecha negra en el abdomen, y también se veían su telaraña, que no se notaba con la lente normal.

Una vez examinadas las hojas, llevé la maceta afuera con mucho cuidado para no sacudir las arañitas en su sitio.

Unbeatable

The waves were strong and relentless. Along the shoreline, they were picking up logs and hauling them out to sea, only to toss them back on the rocks with the next roller, like so many sticks from a game of pick-up-sticks.

Five logs on the way out.

With each wave, the stones on the beach rattled and rumbled, rolling down, being thrown back up. An unexpectedly high wave pulled the stones out from under my feet, tossing me back on my tail end in the wet. It was lucky for me that the stones felt soft, as they slid loosely in the surf. I was not hurt, much.

And coming back in.

And yet ... and yet ... Among the rolling stones, I find fragile pieces of shell, sea critters, even spider webs, holding their own against the pounding waves.

Molted carapace of a small kelp crab.

Soft sponge

So fragile! A piece of hydrocoral, tangled with seaweeds. Found half-buried in rolling stones.

Molted piece of crab belly plate.

And last, above the reach of the waves at the moment, but still within their spray zone, an old stump, torn and battered, and sheltering, among other things, a community of spiders.

These shells and stone were at my elbow height above the beach, and above the high tide line. Somehow they've been tossed up here, out of the reach of most waves. And if you look closely, there are at least two spider webs tying the stump together. I'm not sure, but I think there's a greyish spider in the centre of the main one. Do you see it?

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, ... ; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecclesiastes 9:11, KJV (just because I like the KJV language.)

Life is tough.

Chia, in a mournful mood.

"This bed is too small! Why don't you fix it?"

She has slept in this basket ever since she was a kitten. She has a new, larger basket, with a wool cushion and a catnip toy, and she does consent to curl up there at times. But this little one is her old favourite; wherever I move it, there she goes to sleep. Even if she hangs over the edges all around.

Maybe if I put the little basket inside the large one?

Arachtober 10: Today's entry is a spider meal, appropriate for the Canadian Thanksgiving season.

Ready to eat

#Arachtober

Wet weather catch

As the fog lifts ...

Spider web on tree trunk

Web and wall

At the fish ladder on Woodhus Creek, a spider takes advantage of the summer drought to build her web.

Cement, rocks, and fine silk, catching the sunlight. The spider is there in the centre, dazzling white in the afternoon sun.

So fragile, that web; I can brush it away with a finger; a frantic wasp can tear a great hole in it. And yet pound for pound, it's stronger than the rocks beneath, stronger than the heavy concrete wall.

And at the end of the day, the spider will eat it, and reprocess it for tomorrow's web.

Spider geometry

The simplest of webs...

And a patient weaver.

In wet woods near Woodhus Creek.

And round and round she goes

This morning, a spider decided to make her web an inch outside my kitchen window, at the top where the window frame gives her a hint of shelter from the rain. I climbed up into the sink to watch her work.

Let it rain, who cares?

Weaving with several threads. Eight thread grabbers come in handy.

And round and round she goes.

View of the spinnerets, producing dual threads.

While most spiders have six spinnerets, some have two, four, or eight. ... Most spinnerets are not simple structures with a single orifice producing a single thread, but highly complex structures of many microscopic spigots, each producing one filament. This is important partly because it produces the necessary orientation of the protein molecules, without which the silk would be weak and useless. (Wikipedia)

I climbed down and went about my chores. When I came back an hour later, the web was done, and the spider was in hiding, waiting for her breakfast.

Jokey spiders

The cross spiders (not cross at all; I think they giggle a lot), have been missing this summer so far, but this week they've turned up, and are happily making their humans dance. They've been building their webs just at face height over walk ways, across back decks, and in front of doors, never in the same place twice. As I said, they giggle. Every time I get a face full of web, I'm sure of it.

This one built a little too high for me, and it caught the sunlight just before Laurie walked into it.

The strands of silk function like prisms, separating the sunlight into rainbow colours.

Well, that was a waste! says Spidey. So she took down that web, and rebuilt it under my tree. And yes, I got a mouthful of web. Again.

Wet, cold, and bejewelled

The Fraser Delta is prone to thick fogs in winter and spring, sometimes so murky that I drive following the shoulder of the road, which is about all I can see. (I once followed the lights of a car a few metres ahead. He seemed to know where he was going, until he drove, without hesitation, into a deep ditch.)

Today's fog wasn't quite that bad. The fields alongside the highway faded out into a grey nothingness, and those inevitable fog-grey Vancouver cars were visible only as a pair of lights. But the traffic was light, and there was no ice - yet - so we zipped ourselves into down and wool, and went to look at birds on Boundary Bay.

We came back with 150 or so peeps photos to sort; I'll post some of them tomorrow.

On the way back to the car, we passed a monkey tree festooned by spider webs,each silken thread heavy with glassy beads.

The central disk is a spider's skating rink. Empty, though.

Detail of another web. These beads look like they're frozen. They could be. The temperature is hovering around 0°C.

Top-heavy web, torn by the weight of the mist.

Almost caught me!

I stepped outside at midnight, and nearly ran into this, right at face level:

The white spots are tiny flies.

Cross spider, Araneus diadematus.

In the morning, her web was gone.

What spider made this web?

"You never know what I'll find in Strathcona," I wrote yesterday. And then I found this:

Guerrilla knitting!

Does the web need a permit?

This was just outside the Wilder Snail. It won't catch a snail. So far, its take is a photographer or two.

(More info about guerrilla knitting, or yarn bombing, including photos here, here, and here.

Making street art “a little more warm and fuzzy.”

I found many photos of yarn graffiti here in Vancouver; here's one by knitgirl,  and a more practical one by tracylikesyou.)

Desk-top building project

Laurie brought me a spider ...

While he waited on my desk in a pill bottle, he decided to make himself comfortable. He got my attention, and a new temporary home:

In the morning, I set him free to find a home of his own.

Tied to the sky

I have been wondering this summer and fall about the scarcity of spiders in our area. Most summers, even my little garden area is home to several dozen big cross spiders, a funnel-web spider or two, big hunting spiders in every corner, and a few house spider webs. Up by the outdoor light, cross spiders build an obstacle course of webs, getting fat on the catch. Not this year. There's a hunter near my door, and a few miniatures in my bowl of rocks; that's about it.

So I was happy to find an alley full of bejewelled webs, each with its glowing amber Araneus diadematus (which, translated, means "Spider with a crown") at the centre, in Crescent Beach. The sun was dazzling, the sky a vivid blue; so was the wall of a shed. A perfect foil for the webs and their builders.

Spider and shadow, If you look closely, you can see the web.

She's fat. Good hunting here.

Long and lanky.

These spiders make a circular web, with 20 to 30 or so (I counted) radiating spokes and a spiral of sticky web filling most of the area, except a gap of a couple of inches between the centre where the spider waits, and the bug-catching section. The web is quite orderly, except for a tangle of signal lines at the very centre; how the spider keeps tab on which line goes to which part of the web is a mystery to me.

Section of a web, new, unbreached, and with no spider at the centre. Unusual. Maybe a bird got it.

Far overhead, and swinging in the breeze. Where the best bugs are. The intense light makes for a two-tone spider.

A large, flat basket of a web. One measly fly, not worth tying up.

I often wondered how these spiders attach their webs to the sky. Look at this one; the spokes of the wheel on the upper part go to nothing but blue sky. The construction of such a web requires a bit of ingenuity and site preparation beforehand. The spider dangles lines from trees and other high vantage points, sometimes rappelling down on them herself, at other times just letting the breeze take them until they make contact with something a good distance away. Lines connect to lines, building a frame in empty space. Once this is done, the spider drops down to her chosen centre, and starts making the spokes. Lines to "nowhere" are actually tied to one of the original frame lines. There is a clear example of this in the fourth photo above.

The spirals come last, then the spider retires to her office to manage her communications centre.

Some of these spiders remove their web every day, eating the leftover silk, then rebuild. Others can't be bothered, and sit in tattered, dusty webs littered with the remains of several days' meals. Just as in human home decor, it's all a matter of taste.

Ambition. Perhaps unrealistic.

At a pay phone outside Edgewater Motel, Campbell River:

"Come on, make that phone call!"

She hung there the whole week that we stayed. She never caught anyone. I kept the cell phone charged.

.

To spin or not to spin

I will never catch up. Ever.

I've got half a dozen bugs in bottles and boxes on my desk, waiting to be blogged about; my extra hard drive is full of folders labelled, "Blog these"; I've got bookmarks, books, lists of links; the garden is growing, the bees are visiting ...

I need a week, just now and then, with 9 30-hour days in it. Please?

Or I can just get a move on. Starting with a batch of spiders.

1. I flipped a rock today. On the bottom, I found this large web:

Spider web. With average-sized dried maple leaf for comparison.

I didn't want to disturb the spider inside, but I did get a bit of her in one photo; there's a fat, round, brown and black spider body visible just under the centre, and the tip of a couple of legs on the left side.

Funnel-web spider.

2. On the rhododendrons along the walk, the pretty cross spiders are setting up shop. They're still very tiny; barely bright dots where the sun hits them.

Araneus diadematus.

They all, without exception, arrange their round web in front of the vegetation, and sit motionless in the centre, always with their topside facing out, head down.

3. I found this Philodromus dispar in my hallway, captured him, and photographed him in the viewing tin. He (his pedipalp has a thick, blobby end, which identifies him as male) didn't appreciate the attention, but frantically ran around and around, looking to escape, so I quickly let him go, beside the door to the outside, leaving him to make the choice; outside or inside. He chose inside.

I saw him later, roaming in the bathroom. The next day, he was on a lamp in the living room, and later on the wall over my desk. He doesn't make a web. He's a hunter, looking for a mate, probably.

Black and white running crab spider. Always recognizable, because he's lost one of his pedipalps.

4. And this is my Brownie, lurking in her jar:

Steatoda bipunctata

She makes a messy web, with lines going every which way, some sticky, some to be used as paths or signalling threads. She hangs upside-down, after the manner of a house spider, but chooses different spots according to her whim of the moment. Usually, she is under some sort of shelter; a leaf or a clump of frass. Here, she is under the thick stem of a dried leaf.

When a woodbug (her favourite food) falls into the web, she springs into action. But instead of heading directly to the bug, she climbs to the top of a thread, then angles down to reach the bug from overhead. She bites it, then ties it up with silk, using her back legs to manipulate the threads. Once it's tied up, she drags it off, and hides it under another leaf to eat later on.

5. I found this big spider on a garden wall in Tsawwassen:

Large hunter, Tegenaria sp.

Tegenarias are web spiders, but I often see them laying in wait under a bit of shelter, without a web. This one was under the overhang of the top of the wall. A couple of feet away, I found an egg mass, probably hers. You can see the individual eggs under their blanket of webbing. (Photos of egg sacs of other Tegenarias, here and here.)

Spider egg mass.

6. This is a jumping spider that I have never seen before. The usual jumpers I see are those zebra-striped ones. This was a bit bigger, a lot more curious; he kept dancing around, trying to get a good look at the camera.

Phidippus borealis? Tsawwassen.

See those headlight eyes! No fly can sneak by, unobserved! I have seen a jumping spider leap almost 4 inches to catch a fly in mid-air. No web is needed.

Jumper. Side view. Eyes on the top of his head. Handy.

And for a change of scenery, here's a corner of my garden.


I didn't see any spiders on this plant.

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