Thursday, September 23, 2010

Special Guest Star: Stretch

I was taking pictures of tunnel spiders and looked up to see, right next to me,  a slender brown spider patiently sending out line after line to see if one would catch.

It's funny. The spiders are very nervous about any vibration. Big Spider bolts the moment we open the door in the morning, and the tunnel spiders dive back into their tunnels as soon as they can. They don't seem to mind the lights, though, or the camera. Stretch here posed beautifully through all the camera and light use.


I assumed that he was trying to get an anchor line in place so he could spin a web; Big Spider has been known to spend an hour or so at it, and he was there for some time, but when I went out two hours later, he had successfully gotten a line across the sidewalk, but showed no signs of beginning a web. This morning, I found a new web in approximately the right spot, but the spider hiding there was one of Cousin Sal's relatives, not him.

The folks at bugguide.net say he's a male Neoscona crucifera, so it's a pity that there's a whole house between him and Big Spider.

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