Each evening they come down from their daytime hidey spots for a night of hunting. But first, a little light housekeeping – the ravages of the day have to be repaired, the rips and tears caused by too-big insects, birds, the wind and the occasional blundering human (yes ok, me). The spiders move from spoke to spoke of their webs, carefully dabbing their little silk excreting ends to link each with its neighbour.
Then it’s time to remove the leaves and the desiccated remains of the previous evening meal, picked off and tossed away. Then, they lie in wait for the night’s prey. (There's more pictures of spiders at night at my Flickr spot.)
At the moment most of the spiders in the garden are Common Orb Weavers but earlier in the month we had an inundation of Saint Andrews Cross Spiders. The ones in our garden are generally lazy bastards and don’t bother with the full cross, just one arm or ½ a cross. They are beautiful though, those gorgeous bright yellow abdomen stripes. There are quite a few of those leaf-curling jonnies – I can’t get a good picture of them though, the camera isn’t powerful enough for such fine detail.
(I can only hope we don't have any of these living in the backyard.)
Watching the spiders is a rather pleasant evening activity though, particularly with a gin-and-tonic in hand. Brother, OJ, was quite impressed with the size of some of our Orb Weavers when last he visited.
Posts
2 comments:
awwwww - I just looked at all the adorable Ping Pony Pics - they are sooooo gorgeous!
I would lava to have a kitty kat but our landlord would notice and he would likely throw me out on the street for such a misdemenour.
Silverbeet recipe - hmmm. Is it the same as spinach?
caw xx
Silverbeet is NOT the same as spinich but many people call silverbeet spinich. Silver beet is the BIG one with hefty white stalks, I think some people call it chard!. Real spinish is English spinish and has almost heart-shaped leaves and can be eaten like salad! Here endith the lesson.
x
dmm
Post a Comment