Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Meet Eriophora

P3150011
Eriophora (Araneidae formerly Argiopidae)is a largish orb building spider with a web over a meter across. This one is just near our mail box. She eats her web every morning and reconstructs it every evening. During the day she tries to look like part of a cluster of dead leaves.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice pic but I almost had to flag it as objectionable content - I hate walking into those webs! I have a Deinopsis in my garden at the moment: http://shipway.net/img/Rufous.jpg

Have you abandoned all thought of ever returning to work yet?

Leesha said...

Steve, it has to go!
How do you know its a "she"??

Anonymous said...

That's a gorgeous shot Stephen! The black background really highlights its subtleties - how did you manage that?

Nice one :)

babyoog said...

Oh my. That's. A. Big. Spider.

I think I should go now.

unique_stephen said...

William - they are indeed. They are so terribly sticky and it doesn't seem to matter how vigorously you wave the designated and specially hidden 'spider stick' in front of you as you walk to ward them from your path you still seem to walk right into them.

Leesha - 'it' sits around waiting for the spider of the other sex to turn up, mates then eats it alive. And you question whether it's a 'she'
No but seriously, you can tell by turning them over and licking them, they taste different.

Mike - um, duknow, I did it at night - about 5 mins before I posted so that probably accounts for the dark background but I have noticed when I take other photos on macro in anything less than full sun the background is very dark - the moth for example was taken at around 6PM with plenty of afternoon light about. I'm using a digital Olympus u300 set to macro on full telephoto and a bigassed torch so it can focus. All the techy details are here.

babyoog - c u, by

that girl said...

"they taste different."

you crack me up, man.

Andrew said...

That would be a cool poster. And, you know, I have the printer to make that poster. Wanna see a REALLY BIG spider?