I haven’t been getting about much over the last couple of days. Point the camera up at roughly a 45º angle from where I took yesterday’s shot, and you will catch our tenant spider in your viewfinder. I noticed today that she’s built up quite a larder for herself. Fine by me: at least all these critters aren’t eating the houseplants.
The second picture in a row to show another inhabitant of our living room that has more legs than Clare and I put together. Perhaps we should clean our now-unused fire grate a little more often, but now this beastie has moved in, we could let it lie for a while longer.
What is the plural of daddy longlegs? Daddy longlegses? Daddies longlegs? Neither seems very satisfactory. Anyway, these two members of the genus Pholcidae were either about to square off with each other — or possibly mate. As I type this the following morning, I’m looking at the same spot in the corner of our living room, and neither of them is there now, so it was either a devastating battle or a good party.
Continuing my two-day walk, in the morning, the heath was at points a profusion of cobwebs, highlighted by dew and the morning sun: this photo captures a portion of it but cannot reflect the sheer scale of this spider-city, a fly’s vision of hell. When I returned past this point a few hours later, there was no sign of all this. Note the little brown leaf trapped to centre right, proof this is not a monochrome shot.
This could be the first confirmed death of an organism to be documented on the blog: unlike this bumblebee, the wasp didn’t get away. Paralysed, wrapped in unbreakable bonds and dragged away to some dark corner where its captor will slowly suck its juices out over the next couple of days. I hope your ending is not as harsh as that. Nor mine, come to that.
Strimming the long grass on the allotment today I think I inadvertently took out this spider’s web: the remnants of it are visible to the left. It then had to put up with me sticking my camera in its personal space immediately afterward. I’m sure it’ll get over the difficulties; spiders have been on this planet a lot longer than us, and I’m sure will outlive us, too.
As has happened before, an otherwise dull day at home was photographically enlivened by visiting the cave spiders in the shed. Meta menardi is about the largest species of spider you will find in Great Britain and we have at least four of them happily living out their lives downstairs. I love the little hairs on its legs. But, OK, I probably wouldn’t want one scampering over my face or anything.
Those of you who haven’t already quickly moved on, shrieking, may care that I hadn’t seen any of the cave spiders in the shed since a couple of years ago: 22/6/14 was the last appearance of one on here. Thought they had moved out, but three turned up today under an old table that we had in there. I think the one on the left is the one I got in a better picture of on 9/6/12; the red markings on the legs (though not that clear on this shot) are very similar. And look, it’s sweet. They’re breeding….
Apologies to the arachnophobes amongst you but I think these are beautiful and impressive creatures. I have no idea whether this is the same one I’ve captured before; there is definitely more than one living in our sheds, possibly three big ones or more. As long as their webs are not disturbed they make quite willing models.
I know this is an essentially crap photo, with the focus all wrong, but it was a dramatic moment, at least at the micro-scale. I was trying to get a photo of this bumblebee as it buzzed around the plants by our front door, when suddenly it blundered into this web down by our old coal cellar, where the cave spiders live. Now I don’t know about you but if something one and a half times my size — and bumblebees, in insect terms, are not small — came leaping out at me with the intention of making me lunch, I think my life would flash before my eyes even if it was just an insect life. Three seconds later the bumblebee escaped, but I bet those were the longest three seconds it had ever known. I managed to get this one shot of the drama.
Being 42 