13 Tuesday Aug 2024
Tags
British butterflies, British spiders, Crab spider, crab spider kills Speckled wood, Speckled wood, White crab spider
Me: ‘What on earth is that Speckled wood doing?’
Speckled wood: ‘ . . . ‘
Crab spider: ‘Yum! Lunch!’
18 Tuesday Jun 2024
Posted in spiders
I think you can easily see how this little arachnid got its common name of Cricket bat spider – the black shape on its abdomen does look very similar to a cricket bat and, to my eye, the three lines on the base of its abdomen also resemble the stumps, though that may just be my fanciful imagination.
This is Mangora acalypha, which the Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme website reports is mostly found in southern Wales and England, mostly on gorse bushes but also on other shrubs. These were the first two I’d ever seen and were on Creeping thistle and Common fleabane, in a field that once was farmed but is now re-wilding (though, sadly, the Welsh government has plans to build 500 houses in this location). You can read more details about this species and see a map of its distribution on the SHRS website.
16 Saturday Mar 2024
Posted in spiders
This is just one of my current flatmates, the biggest one, but I know for sure that there are others. Its territory is my stairwell, though it most often parks itself, as shown below, under the alarm box. My other flatmates are not Daddy long-legs, but other spider species. There’s a tiny crab spider, which just appeared around the side of my laptop screen, as if to say ‘What about me?’ – it’s now been moved to a house plant, and there are a couple of equally tiny jumping spiders, which I find very cute, that spend most of their time amongst the plants along the window sills. Do you have spidery flatmates?
26 Tuesday Dec 2023
Tags
British flies, British insects, British spiders, insect larvae, invertebrates, larvae in leaf litter
As happens every year, I found many invertebrates I’ve not been able to identify, especially from riffling through the leaf litter. Perhaps one of you will recognise one of these creatures but, even if you don’t, I feel they deserve their moment in the spotlight.
30 Thursday Nov 2023
Posted in spiders
I found my first false widow spider, a Noble false widow (Steodata nobilis), at the end of October but it’s taken a few weeks for confirmation of my identification to filter through the recording system, hence the delay in showing you this little beauty. It had chosen its spot well: the outer wall of an apartment block, on the southern side where it could enjoy any sun and with a nearby crack between building and boundary wall where it could escape when threatened.
People often freak about spiders, and the false widows get some bad press because they get confused with the black widows (Latrodectus spp.), but these creatures are relatively harmless, especially when treated with respect. Yes, they might give a person a little nip if they’re trapped (e.g. in clothing) but so would you if you felt trapped and in danger, right? (The Natural History Museum website has a great page on identifying these lovely spiders.)
04 Monday Sep 2023
I was entranced, and relieved, to spot these two Wasp spiders during a recent meander around Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park. The park, which was once a landfill site, was closed for a long time while repairs were done to its infrastructure, to stop contaminated water seeping from its interior rubbish. The repair process was conducted without any regard for the local flora and fauna and, during previous recent visits, I’d not managed to find any of these stunning spiders, first discovered at the park in August 2021. It’s good to know they’ve survived the upheaval.
26 Wednesday Apr 2023
Posted in spiders
I don’t know whether it’s the time of year or the weather conditions but I’m seeing quite a lot of Flower crab spiders (Misumena vatia), mostly white so presumably male – the females, according to the Wildlife Trust website, are not able to change their colour to match their surroundings.
I was rather tempted to make this blog’s title a pun on their having eight eyes (‘Aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye’, or ‘The eyes have it’) but resisted – though, as you see, I still couldn’t help but mention them. Just imagine what it must be like to have so many eyes – what do they see?
In an attempt to photograph all those eyes, I managed to get quite close to one particular beastie but quickly backed off when it began to open its legs – they are not the open arms of welcome, but rather the snatch of death!
31 Friday Mar 2023
Posted in insects
Last Monday, when we actually had a sunny day, I was checking the flowers of a Gorse bush for any tiny critters that might be lurking there (lots of weevils), when I spotted this stunning creature. With a yellow-green body and vibrant green legs, I think this is the aptly named Cucumber green orb spider (Araniella cucurbitina sensu lato) but, as the Nature Spot website entry for this spider explains, there are two very similar species, Araniella cucurbitina and A. opisthographa. So, for recording purposes, if you can’t distinguish one from the other, you can use the catch-all name Araniella cucurbitina sensu lato meaning ‘in the broad sense’.
07 Saturday May 2022
Posted in spiders
Tiny balls of baby spiders like this one make the news every year, with headlines like ‘Millions of “exploding” yellow baby spiders invade Britain’ (Mirror, June 2015).
Of course, the spiders aren’t actually invading Britain – these are the common Garden spiders (Araneus diadematus) that can be found stringing their webs from every available bush and shrub. And, of course, they don’t actually explode – they normally huddle into a tight ball but, if you get too close, they rapidly run out in all directions, to try to protect themselves. As soon as they feel safe, they huddle back together again. They’re actually very cute!
30 Saturday Apr 2022
Posted in insects, wildflowers
Tags
British butterflies, British spiders, butterfly, Crab spider, Crab spider kills Orange-tip, Cuckoo flower, Orange-tip, Orange-tip male, Orange-tip on Cuckoo flower
Sometimes I can be a bit slow. During today’s walk, I was ambling along the edge of a meadow when I spotted a male Orange-tip butterfly flitting from one small patch of Cuckoo flower to the next. Then it stopped at one spot longer than usual so I walked quickly over to get some photos. I could see its tongue was out so knew it was feeding but, still, I was amazed at how long it was staying put on the one flower. And then I saw why …
The poor butterfly had been grabbed by a lurking, very well camouflaged Crab spider.
earthstar 
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