{"id":42857,"date":"2026-10-24T11:16:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T15:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=42857"},"modified":"2026-10-24T11:16:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T15:16:01","slug":"icky-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/10\/icky-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Icky ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

A handful of the pics that have been accumulating over the past couple of weeks;<\/strong> I decided to go with the creepy ones this time around.<\/p>\n

First, if you recall when I tackled the jagged ambush bug<\/a> some time back, I placed it<\/a> on a healthy cluster of butterfly bush blossoms so it could continue capturing food, since they’re reluctant (for unknown reasons) to switch away from the dead heads. That one remained on the cluster I’d relegated it to, long after it should still have been useful.<\/p>\n

\"jagged
I mean, they’re well<\/em> past the sell-by date, not to mention serving as absolutely no concealment whatsoever, but there it sits, visible even from a distance. Or at least, then – this was eleven days after placing it on this same cluster, which was healthy then, but eventually the ambush bug could no longer be found there, and that particular butterfly bush seems to have given up producing blossoms for the season now. Well, except for this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"sparse
For a bush that’s now notably taller than I am, and considerably wider (yeah, really,) it’s funny to see that it has but three pathetic little flower clusters like this, especially when the paler variety by the driveway, probably 1\/10th<\/sup> the size, is still blooming enthusiastically. Ah well.<\/p>\n

While out at night with the headlamp, it’s not uncommon to see little blue-green sparkles reflecting back at me from the eyes of spiders, but this is usually on the lawn or out on the pond surface – only occasionally do they come from plants more than a handful of centimeters off of the ground. The primary culprits are wolf spiders and fishing spiders, both wandering hunters and so spending most of their time where they can explore for their prey. Thus, when I got that little twinkle from about a meter up on a plant on the water’s edge, I had to take a look.<\/p>\n

\"adult
That’s a six-spotted fishing spider (Dolomedes triton<\/em>,) but don’t bother telling me there’s ten spots, because it refers to the spots on the belly<\/em> which I admit I’ve never seen nor photographed, simply because they never show their bellies willingly and I’ve never sat down to tickle one. I know, right? Slack. This was a medium-sized one, large enough to give many people the heebies but much smaller than some I’ve seen, and yes, missing a leg. They don’t, however, make a cluster of weblines suspended on plants unless they’re up to one particular thing, which you might have spotted if you’re paying attention. Here’s a better look:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"adult
Yep, that’s a brood of newborns back there, all umpteen thousand of them (I counted,) remaining safe within this tent of webbing while mom remains alert for anything disturbing it, which I endeavored not to do. And yes, I focused on the bebbies for a few frames, specifically to satisfy all those doting mothers reading.<\/p>\n

\"closeup
So you know, in order to get this close, I had to be sitting on the ground right alongside the plant, which was right alongside the water, so I threw down a nylon ground cloth to try and keep my hiney dry. Except that this was right by a cluster of bald cypress knees, so doing this without pegging myself was challenging. And since the little adorables were deep within this tent, the flash was reflecting off of web strands throughout the frame, mostly defocused but still enough to throw light back and thus soften the pic. All while mom is sitting almost right underneath the tip of the lens. While I considered trying to capture an individual specimen for detailed closeups, I knew I could never get into the tent effectively without both earning the protective wrath of mom and scattering the bebbies, so I left that idea alone. I had intended to come back when daylight was striking the nest and see if I could get an angle that illuminated the young while producing as few reflections form the webbing as possible, but never tried, mostly because I strongly suspected sunlight would never actually hit the nest – mom’s smarter than that. So we have a tighter crop instead.<\/p>\n

\"full-resolution
Still suffering from too much light scatter off of the webbing, but at least we have that one looking deep into the camera with those dreamy black eyes. No way to get an effective measurement, but I would say no more than 3mm across the leg spread. <\/p>\n

I have no idea how long they remain in the protective nest, nor whether it’s mom or the young themselves that decide when it’s time to leave – I just checked (15 days after these pics were taken) and the nest is abandoned so, within two weeks? While individual strands of web could be found in several places on the same plant, I spotted no bebbies anywhere, and the web strands mean little – every<\/em> plant in the yard likely has them, since spiders are everywhere.<\/p>\n

Like under the kitchen window.<\/p>\n

\"web
The telltale white scribbles in the center of the web (as well as its size, close to a meter across,) indicates that this is the web of a black-and-yellow argiope (Argiope aurantia<\/em>,) commonly known by a variety of other names though I knew them by ‘garden spider.’ The shadow give more of an indication that it’s occupied, even though her legs are visible if you look closely. She moved this web to several locations in this immediate area, disappearing at least twice, which seemed odd. And eventually, we found this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"egg
That’s her egg sac, well-separated from the main web and also well above my head under the eaves. I’ve been eyeballing it semi-regularly, and have seen no sign of hatchlings even though it now has a distinctly deflated look;<\/strong> whether this is from the bebbies springing forth or the bare fact that she produced it in the steaminess of summer and now it’s considerably cooler, I don’t know. I should probably examine the bush nearby to see if I can find any sprogs – I don’t think I’ve ever photographed newborn argiopes…<\/p>\n

Okay, that’s the creepy ones out of the way. More pleasant ones to come. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A handful of the pics that have been accumulating over the past couple of weeks; I decided to go with the creepy ones this time around. First, if you recall when I tackled the jagged ambush bug some time back, I placed it on a healthy cluster of butterfly bush blossoms so it could continue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[1909,1912,6910,1816,657,1895,803,804,658,7723,8935],"class_list":["post-42857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-argiope-aurantia","tag-black-and-yellow-argiope","tag-buddleja-davidii","tag-butterfly-bush","tag-dolomedes-triton","tag-egg-sac","tag-jagged-ambush-bug","tag-phymata","tag-six-spotted-fishing-spider","tag-spiderlings","tag-web-nest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42857"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42875,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42857\/revisions\/42875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}