Okay, finally updated the Latest Images gallery, so now it’s time to clear out a few more from the backlog of photos from the past couple of weeks. Right now these will be spiders, only a few, but impressive specimens, all from three nights ago and all from a span of eleven minutes.
Now, when I’m out with the headlamp at night, the reflections from spider eyes are distinct and frequent: they’re always blue-green in color, and might twinkle as the spider moves but the color doesn’t shift like dew will. If I wanted to see how many I could score in a night, it would be dozens, easily, but most of those would be wolf spiders since they’re the most active on the ground as well as the easiest to spot by reflection. With a misting bottle I might get quite a few more – dog knows I walk through enough webs strung among the bamboo. The ones you’re about to see were noticeable even without making the effort, and I present them in reverse order of my finding them.
I recalled photographing something like this before, and I don’t have any more identifying characteristics this time around, so I’ll simply say it was a nursery web spider (Genus Pisaurina,) and leave it at that. The leg spread was an estimated 30-40mm, and it was quite obvious on the large leaves. It was content to remain in place as I maneuvered for a decent angle.
The next was indeed found by its eye reflections, but notable in that the reflections were visibly higher/closer than the background leaves, indicating that this might be a large specimen for its legs to lift it a visible amount.
Those two eyes sitting high and further back from the front of the cephalothorax (‘head’) peg this easily as a wolf spider (Family Lycosidae,) though the size and locale help too, and of course we have an egg sac carried in typical fashion; many species do this. But we don’t have to guess her size from the bamboo leaves nor from my estimates, because we have a proper scale shot:
I print these out with my business cards every once in a while and carry a few in my wallet because, you know, always be prepared (I had to toss the condoms out to have room.) This one was complacent enough to allow me to place the scale alongside her, so you can see that body length is in the realm of 20mm, while leg spread exceeds 50 – not the largest that I’ve seen, but impressive nonetheless. The sparkles on her abdomen are likely from the dew just starting to form.
The worst, however, was the first.
I was advancing along the beaver crossover between the creek and the pond, where I’d also photographed the wood duck, looking carefully to try and spot anything in the water, when this specimen descended from the trees right in front of me. Easily the biggest leg spread of the three, and it paused just above eye level and fiddled with its webline, allowing me to snag this shot. Then I tried switching over to manual focus because autofocus kept wandering, and as I looked down at the lens to get the correct switch (I have a beef with lens manufacturers in that they a) always put this switch in a different location, even on other lenses from the same manufacturer, and b) often put it alongside other switches that feel exactly the same, necessitating that you look at the lens to ensure you have the correct one,) and when I looked back up after that brief second, the spider was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t small enough to disappear into the leaf litter too readily, plus it had a two-meter descent down to it, and almost the same to return to the branches where the web was anchored. Wherever it went, it went with record speed and vanished completely, and even though I’m getting used to spiders and know this was a harmless species (I really only have to rule out two for this area,) my lingering arachnophobia wasn’t pleased with the sudden disappearance of a large spider that was that close in the first place. The large pedipalps, those two balls right in the center of the image, peg this as a male, but my initial searches on a rough description didn’t turn up any matches, so I can’t even hazard a guess as to which species this is. I thought it bore a resemblance to the golden silk orbweaver, but the males of that species look entirely different from this, so no.
So only three, not enough to call it a night of big spiders, but again, some impressive specimens in the time it takes to hard-boil an egg. Efficient, at least…