Sunday, September 17, 2006

Pictures and videos

Since we were busy at the dragonboat event yesterday, we took it easy today. We spent most of the day taking pictures of the orb spiders around our place. We have five that are easy to see - four in the backyard and one in the front yard. I'm sure that there are other orb spiders at other people's houses, but maybe we're just lucky :) Today's pictures are here - most of them are mine, but a couple are Ian's. I'm quite pleased with the way that some of them turned out.

Ian also spent quite a lot of the day editing the dragonboat videos I took yesterday (when I'm not paddling, I'm videographer for the team) and editing the Silvermasters site. The videos are available here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love your spiders! Pushing the leaf off was awesome. And they have such neat webs, except for where they've obviously had lunch:) My Arabella, that I had in the back yard, couldn't have cared less about regularily, or leaves for that matter, in her web.

Love, Mom

Anonymous said...

Your pix are really amazing! That last one of the spiderweb was really spectacular. Your commentary had me laughing out loud.

I know of a place where you can sell photos like that (grin).

Anonymous said...

Okay, cuz I'm a really big nerd (with 3 insect & spider id books), I identified your spiders for you. You are correct that they are all orb weavers.

The littlest one is an Araneus cavaticus (Barn Spider). It usually spins at night and often retreats above the web by day. It threads a silk line to the web to signal the arrival of any ummmmm 'dinner deliveries'.

The giant one is an Araneus diadematus (Garden Spider / Cross Spider). This monster was imported from Europe. It makes a new web daily, usually at night, after eating the remains of the old web.

You can see a cool spider web construction gallery here:
http://www.conservation.unibas.ch/team/zschokke/spidergallery.html

I believe you were correct in assuming the big spider was the male (the ginormous spider is likely the female). They may start to spin their webs side-by-side, and you might have to watch for eggs & infants on a leaf next to her web. This is the right time of year, I think.

I hate spiders. But all babies are pretty cute, even spider babies.

Love,
Vicki

Anonymous said...

Here's the link again, sorry. You'll have to copy & paste, I think:

http://www.conservation.unibas.ch
/team/zschokke/spidergallery.html

Love again,
Vicki