Category Archives: spiders

Male crab spider

10 Friday Jul 2026

Posted by in spiders

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

I’m currently away on another of my mini-breaks, once again staying in Weymouth in Dorset. I usually try to get the blog posts for my time away all written and scheduled in advance of these breaks but I ran out of time before this trip, so I hope you’ll forgive me for recycling a recent post I made to my Bluesky account on 30 June:

I love that every day’s a school day. I didn’t know until today, when identifying this spider I spotted on my walk, that male crab spiders (Misumena vatia) aren’t like the pale colour-changing females. This little dude, missing a leg, was still intent on waving his remaining limbs around.

n.b. You can see examples of those pale colour-changing females in a couple of my previous posts: Y is for Yellow, from December last year, and Flower crab spiders, posted in April 2023.

Spider: Dysdera crocata

18 Saturday Apr 2026

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on Spider: Dysdera crocata

Tags

, , , ,

I was walking to the supermarket for a food shop, passing an old, stone, house boundary wall, when my eye caught movement low down so, of course, I stopped to look, and, upon noticing the movement was a spider, pulled out my camera (never leave home without one!) to take some photos. Being in the middle of town, I got some funny looks from passers-by, I can tell you, and I heard a young child ask its accompanying adult, ‘What’s that lady doing?’, but I’m used to that these days.

And I got my photos of a new-to-me spider species. Even better, the photos were good enough to distinguish which of the two Dysdera species this was. So, let me present Dysdera crocata, the Woodlouse spider, whose favourite prey is, unsurprisingly, Woodlice, and who can usually be found under stones or logs, or living in cracks in brick or stone walls.

When I checked my guide book and initially read about the two species being difficult to tell apart, my heart sank. But then I saw that D. crocata has 1 to 3 dorsal spines and 1 ventral spine on the upper part of its back legs, which I thought I could see in my enlarged image. And this was later confirmed by an expert on social media. So, it was worth the odd looks and muttered comments!

Tiny but feisty

16 Thursday Apr 2026

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on Tiny but feisty

Tags

, , , ,

It may have been tiny but it was feisty! This Zebra spider (Salticus scenicus) was getting annoyed at me invading its personal space when I was trying to get a macro photo, and it jumped at me a couple of times, presumably trying to protect its little territory and scare me off. But it was always attached to a fine piece of silk so, when I pulled back, the little spider dangled for a few seconds before climbing back up to glare at me from its perch on the park railings. I managed to get a couple of photos before leaving it to go about its business.

First large spider

20 Friday Feb 2026

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on First large spider

Tags

, ,

As you can perhaps see from the background of my photograph, I spotted this, my first large spider of the year, in the same location as My first moth of the year, described in Wednesday’s blog, on the fencing panels that surround a nearby building site. And I’ve blogged about this species before, when I first found one last April. This is the spider Larinioides cornutus and, though the location might seem a bit odd, as I wrote in that earlier blog, this is a species that prefers living on vegetation in damp places but can also be found on built structures in those areas, hence its presence on these fencing panels alongside a path opposite the vegetation edging the River Taff.

Z is for Zebra spider

31 Wednesday Dec 2025

Posted by in spiders

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, ,

My 2025 countdown finishes with one of the cutest little life forms that I’ve encountered many times this year, the Zebra spider (blogged on 8 March).

Happy 2026 to all my wonderful followers and fellow Nature lovers!
I hope the coming year brings you many fabulous encounters with the flora and fauna that surround you, and the peace and calmness that spending time in Nature can bring us all.

S is for spiders

24 Wednesday Dec 2025

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on S is for spiders

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What a fabulous year this has been for new spider sightings, mostly inspired by the new spider guide book I bought with the financial support my local biodiversity records centre provides to its recorders. (I hope they’re pleased with the new records I’ve now provided.)

The image above is one of my new finds, Platnickina tincta (Spider: Platnickina tincta, 21 February), though this particular specimen was found very recently, on 14 December, on my local park railings. If you’re an arachnophile, you might enjoy perusing my list of this year’s finds; if not, I will completely understand if you prefer simply to scroll on. This year’s blogs: Spider: Steatoda nobilis, 25 March; Spider: Zygiella x-notata, 31 March; Spider: Larinioides cornutus, 7 April; Spiders: Philodromus species, 6 May; Spider: Segestria florentina, 21 May; Spider: Cheiracanthium erraticum, 31 May; Spider: Anyphaena accentuata, 4 June; Spider: Pardosa species, 11 June; Spider: Agelena labyrinthica, 9 July; Spider: Agalenatea redii, 9 September; Spider: Metellina segmentata, 20 September; Spider: Eratigena species, 13 October; and Spider: Larinioides sclopetarius, 28 October.

Spider: Larinioides sclopetarius

28 Tuesday Oct 2025

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on Spider: Larinioides sclopetarius

Tags

, ,

Meet my latest new spider find, Larinioides sclopetarius, also known as the Bridge orbweb spider. So, where did I find it? Why, under a bridge, of course! I must quickly add that I didn’t know what it was when I spotted it.

The railings, that make safe the riverside edge of the footpath that runs under a road bridge over the River Taff, were covered in spiders’ webs so I couldn’t resist having a peek to see what had created them. Most of the makers were hiding, as spiders often do in the daytime, but this one was sitting half in half out of its refuge, so I was able to get a couple of photos to post on social media. I was lucky to get a fairly quick identification from the British Arachnological Society, and the find has been attracting quite a lot of interest from arachnophiles. I’ll have to return to see what else I can find there.

Spider: Eratigena species

13 Monday Oct 2025

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on Spider: Eratigena species

Tags

, , , ,

The day I saw the Choughs (see last Friday’s blog Choughed), I was actually in Barry looking for a rare spider. Our local spider expert had found them in the garden centre attached to a local department store so I figured it was worth a look. I did manage to find lots of that particular spider’s webs (the spider was Badumna longinqua; an example of its lace-like web is shown below) but the beasties themselves proved more elusive.

I thought I would buy some potting mix while I was there but, as I had a one mile uphill walk from the train to where I live, I didn’t want to carry anything too heavy, so I tried to pick up one of the 10-litre bags to check its weight. In doing so I uncovered a large spider that had been lurking unseen between two stacks of bags. I thought I’d finally found my target and got as many photos as I could before it scurried back under the pile.

Unfortunately, once I had a closer look at my images, I could see it wasn’t the right spider. What I had found was a Giant house-spider, one of the Eratigena species that can only be positively identified by microscopic examination of the spider’s genitals – and that definitely was not going to happen. As their common name infers, these beauties like to live in our houses, tucked away somewhere you’d probably never see them except when you’re having a spring clean … though I’ve just been reading that the males like to go wandering in search of a female in the late summer/early autumn.

Spider: Metellina segmentata

20 Saturday Sep 2025

Posted by in autumn, spiders

≈ Comments Off on Spider: Metellina segmentata

Tags

, , ,

I’m rather chuffed with how many new spiders I’ve managed to find this year; this is the latest of them, two found close together on vegetation along a quiet local footpath just before my mini break in Weymouth, and now verified by our Welsh spider recording expert.

There are three species of Metellina orb web spiders in Britain, all of which are common and quite difficult to tell apart – my guide book includes the dreaded ‘microscopic examination of the genitalia is necessary to confirm identification‘ phrase. The two species most easily confused are Metellina mengei and Metellina segmentata but, fortunately, they can be seen at different times of the year, M. mengei in spring and early summer, M. segmentata in late summer and autumn. As I found these a couple of weeks ago, in early autumn, that has helped to confirm them as Metellina segmentata.

Spider: Agalenatea redii

09 Tuesday Sep 2025

Posted by in spiders

≈ Comments Off on Spider: Agalenatea redii

Tags

, , ,

I met this handsome little spider, a Gorse orbweb spider (Agalenatea redii) in a local field where once there had been a medieval village (no trace of the village remains above ground, except perhaps if you squint a certain way at small lumps and bumps in the grass).

I was actually checking the dying flower heads of Knapweed for insects, now difficult to find after our prolonged period of drought, and didn’t at first notice the little spider, so well did its colours blend with its surroundings. But then I noticed a series of tiny black eyes watching me from behind a fringe of long pale hairs.

My guide book observes that Agalenatea redii is most often found ‘amongst heath and gorse, and in rough grassland, often in rather damp situations, where it spins its web fairly low down amongst the stems. A retreat is often constructed in an adjacent dead flower head.’ So, perhaps, I had found my watchful little friend sitting comfortably in its retreat, waiting for its next meal to stumble into, and be ensnared in, its web.