Waxcap, Whinchat, Wych elm – these were all worthy contenders for the letter W but my first ever Wasp spiders won the day!
W is for Wasp spider
28 Tuesday Dec 2021
Posted in spiders
Category Archives: spiders
Wasp spiders
31 Tuesday Aug 2021
Posted in spiders
Last week, entomologist Liam Olds made the stunning discovery of local populations of Wasp spiders, not once but twice, the first on 26 August at Porthkerry Country Park in Barry and the second the very next day at Grangemoor Park in Cardiff. Gangemoor is an easy walk for me and I’d never seen these spiders before so, of course, I went searching. Liam and fellow finder Christian Owen had located about 20 of these stunning spiders; I found seven, and was delighted to see so many.
As you can guess from its name, the Wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi) sports wasp-like back-and-yellow stripes on both its upper abdomen (photo above) and under side (below), presumably a clever attempt to fool potential predators into not eating it. In a manner similar to the Common garden spider, the Wasp spider constructs a large web, strung between the tall grasses of its favoured grass- and heath-lands, and sits in the middle awaiting its prey. There is one striking difference with the Wasp spider’s web though; it usually has a white zig-zag stripe running down through the middle. The purpose of this ‘stabilimentum’ is much debated, ranging from a form of camouflage to attracting prey by reflecting ultraviolet light, but it is certainly distinctive.
The Wasp spiders I saw were all females, as the male’s lifespan is short – if he doesn’t get eaten by the female after mating, he dies soon after serving his purpose. He is smaller and lacks the distinctive markings of the female – the UKSafari website has a photo of the male, and much interesting information about these intriguing spiders.
As you can see from the series of photos below, I was lucky to spot one Wasp spider wrapping up her recently caught lunch, an unlucky wasp. It’s a ‘Wasp eat wasp’ world out there, folks!
The spider and the fly
14 Saturday Aug 2021
I was watching this well-camouflaged Crab spider (probably Misumena vatia) restraining its prey when a mother and young son came walking along the path towards me. I could see and hear that the woman was pointing out various flowers and insects to her son so, rather than immediately step out of their way, I asked the boy if he wanted to see something cool. I pointed to where he should look and moved away a little, still conscious of maintaining a Covid-safe distance.
He was spellbound as I explained that the spider had been sitting on a white flower so it could use its white colour to trap the fly. He thought the spider was ‘sneaky’, and I could hear him and his mother still talking about the spider and ‘amazing Nature’ as they walked on. Well done to his mum for encouraging the boy’s interest. I think it’s so important that young people are inspired to look closer at the amazing natural world that surrounds them.
Spot the spider
24 Wednesday Feb 2021
I was checking out the lichens and mosses on this tree trunk when part of the grey bark moved. This tiny spider, which I think is a Zebra spider (Salticus scenicus), was so well camouflaged that I hadn’t even noticed it.
319/366 Current critters
14 Saturday Nov 2020
Tags
Araneus diadematus, British insects, Chrysoperla carnea, Common wasp, earwig, Garden spider, Lacewing, Vespula vulgaris
Just a few of the little critters I’ve come across this week …
I can’t be entirely sure but this is probably Chrysoperla carnea, Britain’s most common Lacewing. Their transparent wings lend these creatures a fragile air so I was surprised to see one still out and about as these Lacewings usually find a cosy spot indoors to hibernate come the autumn weather.
I think these are Common wasps (Vespula vulgaris) that I’m seeing frequently on and around Ivy, and basking in our rare glimpses of sunshine, but I don’t have any face-on shots to properly separate them from German wasps (Vespula germanica). At this time of year, these are likely to be male wasps, which apparently are not able to sting – only female queens and workers have the anatomy for that.
We saw Earwigs hiding in umbellifer seedheads in a recent post (Insecting, 31 October). It seems they like to hide, though I’m not sure how effective this earwig’s hiding place is, its head tucked into a gorse seed but the length of its body exposed. Still, I doubt anyone – insect, bird or human – was going to argue with those pincers.
Spiders have been much in evidence lately. Garden spiders (Araneus diadematus) sit ready to pounce in their strategically strung webs, and, in the right photo, I only spotted the tiny, unidentified spider lurking under the Creeping thistle flower when I got home and started looking through my photos.
300/366 Four-spotted orb weaver
26 Monday Oct 2020
Posted in spiders
If you suffer from arachnophobia, look away now! This spider, found recently in one of the outer fields at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, was the biggest spider I’ve seen in Britain. That’s still not big when compared to Tarantulas or Huntsmen or other large species but it was big enough to make me feel both a teeny bit freaked out and totally fascinated at the same time.
This is a female Four-spotted orb weaver (Araneus quadratus), a species that’s apparently quite common in Britain and can be found in a variety of habitats, from grassland and bogs to gardens and woodlands. As with many spiders, females are larger than males. In this species, females can grow to 17mm long, while the males are only half that size.
This beauty was slowly making her way through the long grass at the edge of a bramble patch. Because of the size of her body, she was struggling to stay upright, and several times overbalanced. But those long striped legs are obviously quite strong and she easily managed to pull herself upright again.
I spotted this orb weaver because her apricot colour stood out from her surroundings but, according to the Naturespot website, adult females are like chameleons, able to change their colour to coordinate with their surroundings, though that process can take about three days to complete. Fascinating!
188/366 Arachnophilia
06 Monday Jul 2020
Tags
British spiders, Misumena vatia, Nursery web spider, Paidiscura pallens, Pisaura mirabilis, sputnik-shaped egg sac, White crab spider
I’m not a huge spider fan but, as I’ve been spying a few during recent meanders, I thought I should show them a little love, so …
White crab spiders (Misumena vatia) like this one are usually very good at camouflaging themselves, lurking on white or pale-coloured flowers, but this little one was being bold, and so made for a good subject for a photo.
A spot of leaf-turning revealed several Paidiscura pallens spiders and their weirdly shaped egg sacs. You can read more about these tiny creatures in my previous blog The sputnik spider, July 2017.
One of the meadows where I walk has a lot of long grass, some of which is now woven together by the silken threads of Nursery web spiders (Pisaura mirabilis). These spiders don’t spin webs to catch food; instead, their webs are constructed to keep their spiderlings safe while they grow in to adults.
The adult spiders are a pale brown in colour, with a pattern of darker brown and black stripes running vertically along their bodies.
The Wildlife Trust website has this fascinating information about Nursery web spiders:
‘Mating is a dangerous game for male Nursery web spiders, so they present a gift of food to the female while laying perfectly still and pretending to be dead. When the female investigates the food, the male will suddenly jump up and mate with her.’
130/366 Spiderlings
09 Saturday May 2020
At first sight, from several feet away, I thought this splodge on the side of a building was a dollop of bird poo … but then I noticed it was moving. So, of course, I immediately got out my camera and peered closer.
They were spider babies, hundreds of them, of the species Araneus diadematus, commonly known as Garden spiders. Both as spiderlings and as adults, these are completely harmless, though, as so often happens, several of the trashy daily newspapers have, in the past, vilified these bunches of babies with such headlines as ‘Woman’s horror as hundreds of tiny yellow spiders erupt from a nest in her back garden’ and ‘Millions of “exploding” yellow baby spiders invade Britain’.
When they’ve grown to adult size, these little cuties will look like those I photographed for my November 2017 blog post Wearing a diadem. You can read more about the Garden spider on the British Arachnological Society’s website.
Two Harvestmen
17 Monday Dec 2018
I found these two mini-beasties lurking on the outside of my building the other day. They may look like spiders but they’re not really – they’re Harvestmen (Opiliones species). Unlike true spiders, Harvestmen can’t spin webs and their bodies have only one segment, not two. They’re completely harmless – no venom – and, I think, rather prehistoric looking.
And I just discovered this very interesting but slightly creepy snippet of information about them on the UK Safari website:
When attacked, harvestmen are able to shed a leg as a defensive trick. Even after the leg becomes detached from the body it continues to jump and flick about. This distracts the predator while the harvestman makes its escape. They are able to shed up to four legs in this way, but they need to retain at least one of the sensory legs to survive.
Peek-a-boo
29 Thursday Nov 2018
This Garden spider (Araneus diadematus) was doing a spot of web maintenance as I passed by and I – rather fancifully, I admit – thought it looked just like it was playing a game of peek-a-boo.
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