Walnut Orb-weaver

On moving an LED candle lantern I spotted this spider which had been sheltering underneath.



The shape and markings made it easy to identify - for once.
A female Walnut Orb-weaver spider.
Information can be found on the UK Safari site.

Minibeasts

An afternoon look round to see what minibeasts were about.

Bee on Bramble



Woodlouse on rotting wood



Ants on the same rotting wood





A moth, possibly AgriphilaTristella

 

Finally a spider

 

as yet unidentified.

Friday at the Flicks - SloMo Spider

A bit more practice using slow motion video on the iPhone 6s:



Not an easy take trying to keep up with the spider while wasps buzzed round my head.
Final speed 25% created using the Slow Fast iOS app.

Spot the Spider

If it hadn't moved I would never have noticed it.
Typical Harvestman, tiny body and enormous legs:



This one was most uncooperative. It would not stay still so I could get some decent photos to stack.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

After yesterday's enormous Sunflowers here is a tiny spider seen today.
Just 5mm across, including the legs.
Three focus stacked shots:



I wonder what the world looks like through six eyes.

Greenhouse Flora and Fauna

Over the past couple of years the greenhouse has been more of a junk store than a growing house so the big clear out has started to get it back to the use it was designed for.

Clearing a bench and shelf made room for the 20 strawberry plants which arrived a couple of days ago, 10 earlies and 10 lates, hopefully for a crop of my favourite food next year:





While moving some of the rubbish out I found a mouse nest made from chewed up frost protection fleece and scuttling around a box was this 2 inch (50mm) beauty:



It looks to me to be a Eratigena atrica, sometimes called a giant house spider

Garden Ord Spider

It has reached the time of year to move some plants from the greenhouse to the conservatory.
On one plant I spotted what I thought was a small snail but it turned out to be soft and squishy when I tried to pick it up. When it moved it became clear that it was a spider:



It had such pretty markings I took some focus stacked close shots processed using Zerene Stacker:



Those 10 focus stacked shots were taken hand held so not every part ended up in perfect focus.
Body size about 6mm.
  
Heron sighting
As we started out on our morning walk about 7 a.m. yesterday I spotted a Heron fly over and swoop down in a nearby back garden where there is probably a small pond. When we returned home Penny went rushing round to the back garden. Yes, you have guessed it. The Heron was taking off from the edge of my pond. Some years ago I used to get regular early morning visits from a Heron so I will be keeping a watch to try to get a photo. Not easy as they are very wary and visits tend to be early morning when lighting is difficult for photography.

Here are a couple of photos I took in December 2009 when a Heron visited my frozen pond:

 

Itsy-bitsy Spider

When I went to the greenhouse to check on the tomato plants I spotted a new thread about four feet long. A quick examination brought to view one of the smallest spiders I have seen spinning its web. A quick dash to grab the macro camera set up and found both batteries flat. Fortunately I had a couple of spares ready charged so I was soon back in the greenhouse trying to grab a hand held macro shot:



It was a problem to find it in the viewfinder, never mind trying to focus on it but I did manage one more reasonable shot as it was more interested in weaving its web than posing for a photo shoot:



Legs spread it can't have been more than 5mm across.
If it hadn't been moving I doubt I would have noticed it.

Itsy Bitsy Spiders

This one, about 10mm total size, was spotted on the side of a water butt as I filled my watering can. Four focus stacked photos:



The next was on a plant at the edge of the garden pond busily wrapping up its supper. A bit smaller than the other one. As it was constantly moving these are individual shots.

In the first shot you can see the silk from its spinnerets and the way the web is being twisted as it rotates its meal, especially if you enlarge the photo:





Who are you looking at?

Itsy-Bitsy Spider

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again

Arachnids Inside and Out

In the conservatory a House Spider, Tagenaria duelica which feeds on small insects caught in its web:





On the back door of the garage a Common Harvestman, Phalangium opilio,. Sometimes called a daddy long legs. These will eat almost anything though they are mainly carnivores. They do not produce silk, spin webs or produce venom though they do have impressive fangs for their tiny body size. As with some other spider species the male has to hurry away after mating as the female is liable to eat him.

Stretch Spider and a Dandelion Clock

Frost on the ground first thing this morning but fortunately it soon melted when the Sun got up.

There are lots of these Stretch Spiders which build their webs between the vertical leaves of my pond plants. I tried to get in close while this one was in the middle of its web but every time it made a dash for its hiding spot where it stretched out along the underneath of a leaf but still kept one leg attached to the web, just in case there was food about:



As children we used to blow on the seed heads of dandelions, the game was to tell the time by how many goes it took to blow all the seeds away:



Both photos are hand held macro shots.


Great Tit;
The egg count has finished at eight and Mama is spending long periods on the nest with Papa bring a tasty grub to feed her every now and then.

Grow Your Own Seed + Itsy Bitsy Spider

Sunflowers growing from seed missed by the birds:



Grand-daddy of them all. Has about 15 flower heads. The large flower which has nearly finished now was where I took most of the macro shots and video.



Spot the spider - close up taken with the Nikon:




To help here is a close crop of that photo:



Must be one of the smallest spiders I have ever seen. About 5mm including the legs. It was only the tiny blob of moving pale green which caught my attention while I was fighting a losing battle with the weeds in the front garden. It is probably a Green Orb Spider - araneus.

Around the Garden Pond

A quick look at some of the wildlife in and around my garden pond:

Fly:


Wasp:


Pond Skater:


Not seen so far this year are any water boatmen.

Tadpole:


Pond Snail:


Stretch Spider:


Bathing Birds:

Robin:


Juvenile Goldfinch and Starling:



Miniature bullrush,  First of this year's male Blue-tailed Damselflies
  

I have spotted some newts but so far they have been too shy to photograph.

European Garden Spider

Spotted a very large orb web in the garden strung between two uprights which are 68 inches (1730mm) apart. It is amazing the effort a spider has to go to in bridging the gap with the first couple of connections before it can start building the web. This usually has to be done every day / night as the web soon becomes damaged by clumsy humans walking through it!

The question that springs to my mind is - when the spider first uses those two uprights and having made its first anchor point on one upright, has it already chosen the second upright or does it come across it accidentally?

Getting the web and spider in focus was problematic as, with such a large span, the slightest breeze was making the whole thing move quite a distance.

This wider view was given a pseudo HDR treatment to make the web strands stand out better.




The owner - a European Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus)
Probably the most common spider in Europe





This individual was about an inch (24mm) across the outstretched legs.

Garden Spider

I was tidying up a pile of wood when I spotted this large spider.
I assume it belongs to the group of sheet web spiders:







Overall length would have been 35 to 40mm
Taken with the TZ7

Feed Your House Spider With Beef

If you want to keep your house spiders healthy in the Winter months when there are few flies about all you need is a bowl of boiled minced beef and a dog with a missing tooth who scatters bits of food around the floor.  ;>)

This is what happened a couple of days ago. An hour or so after Bobby had eaten some of his tea time meal I went in the kitchen. Once I had switched the lights on I noticed a large spider on the floor. Surprisingly it did not run away even when I bent down to have a close look. Nor did it move when I shone a torch right next to it. Why? It had found a small piece of Bobby's minced beef he had thoughtfully left on the floor. The spider was not going to lose its prize.

These four shots make up one picture which can be enlarged:


I went back several times, took several photos, some illuminated with flash, others with an LED torch. Even though the Lumix TZ7 was just a couple of inches away from the spider it stayed put obviously treating the tasty morsel of beef the same way it would its natural prey.

For anyone who wants to know how to have several photos on one image with a transparent background - this was a slight modification of the process shown HERE on YouTube which explains how to add multiple photos using Photoshop Elements.  Instead of overlapping the photos as shown in the video I first cropped each one, added a border and then resized each one on a transparent layer so they stayed separate.

Little Miss Muffet's Companion?

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey,
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away

When I was late putting out some food for the Hedgehog a few nights ago I spotted a garden orb spider in its web. Even though the night was dark I decided to attempt to take a few photographs. Amazingly the Lumix TZ7 did a splendid job using its red LED to give just enough light to auto focus before firing the flash. (The Lumix does not have manual focus)

As the web was strung up in the open I was able to photograph from both sides.



I was more than a bit pleased that the web, which can be very difficult to capture in daylight, showed up well under flash photography, especially with the dark background. To give an idea of scale; the spider is, at the most, about 20mm long with legs outstretched.