Sunday 2 October 2011

The tangled web...

In my garden this week I spotted this rather sinister spider


This little beastie had spun a big web between my "Cobra" climbing beans and the Buddleia. I had a close look at the web in the morning when it was new (I even tried without success to get a good photo of it), and by the evening the web had fulfilled its purpose - it had ensnared a prey insect.


The web looks a bit ragged now, but the insect is well and truly smothered in it.  The spider waiting in the wings will soon be enjoying a substantial meal!

I think the victim looks a bit like a roosting bat!


Here's another shot of the "Web Designer"!


By the following morning, the prey had been moved into the spider's lair under a bean leaf, and the damaged web had been repaired. We can now see that the victim is a Shield Bug.


Here is the spider tucking into its meal:



Is it just my imagination, or has it put on a lot of weight in the last 24 hours??

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On a different theme...  Do you remember those strange Earth Ball fungi "Scleroderma Verrucosum" that I wrote about a few weeks ago? Well, some of them are splitting open now. The scaly, leathery outer skin is peeling back to reveal the soft sac inside. It has a sort of navel, through which its spores will be ejected when the time comes. The way in which the outer skin splits always seems to result in a 5-pointed shape, hence another name for this fungus is "Earth Star".



9 comments:

  1. The spider is a garden spider - we once filmed one building it's web on the window of a cottage we were renting. It was fascinating to watch - if you visit my website it's in the wildlife section.

    Great photos of the ensnaring process

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  2. Thanks Sue! You are a veritable mine of useful information.

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  3. Loved reading about the "Web designer". As for the earth balls, I've never seen them before.

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  4. That spider really did get fat, and I'll remember that insects are fattening and steer well clear of them in future.

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  5. I love spiders. Your photos and commentary are gorgeous.

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  6. Great post Mark! I love discovering spiders in my garden and watching them spin and respin their webs after catching a meal. Lovely pictures too!

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  7. My son (almost 2) is obsessed with 'piders' at the moment so I have to say I've been paying them much more attention that normal - partially to make sure they're not red backs but mostly because they really are fascinating. I'll have to show him your pics - he'll be very excited.

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  8. Wow the spider meal is almost as big as the spider. What a big appetite.

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  9. That's fascinating, and yes, the prey does look like a roosting bat. Those fungi look like something you'd see on Dr.Who.

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