On Common fleabane: spiders and wasps

22 Saturday Aug 2026

Posted by sconzani in insects, spiders, wildflowers

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Common fleabane, Flower crab spider, Ichneumon wasps, insects on Common fleabane, Misumena vatia, Nursery web spider, Pisaura mirabilis, Pulicaria dysenterica, spiders on Common fleabane, Xysticus lanio

This is the penultimate blog about the creatures I’ve been seeing feeding on Drought-tolerant Common fleabane, aiding their survival during this summer of record-breaking heatwaves and drought. Today’s post features both spiders and wasps, starting with the spiders.

This first little cutie is a Flower crab spider, Misumena vatia, one of several of these sneaky creatures I found, not actually feeding on the fleabane but lurking around the edges of the flowers, ready to pounce on anything unsuspecting and tasty looking that was unfortunate enough to perch too close.

Nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis), quite a small specimen so perhaps one of this year’s brood.

Xysticus lanio is another crab spider, one that’s actually quite difficult to identify so I’m not 100% sure of this one.

These last two are Ichneumon wasps, not identifiable from these images but possibly from the subfamily Pimplinae. The one in the second photo is munching on a very tiny creature. There were also lots of common wasp species but they rarely stopped still so I didn’t manage any photos of them on flowers.

Male crab spider

10 Friday Jul 2026

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British spiders, Flower crab spiders, male crab spider, male Misumena vatia, Misumena vatia

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.

Y is for Yellow

30 Tuesday Dec 2025

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Clouded yellow, Colias croceus, female Red-veined darter, immature Red-veined darter, Misumena vatia, Scathophaga stercoraria, Sympetrum fonscolombii, yellow crab spider, Yellow dung fly, yellow insects, yellow-colour wildlife

Yellow is such a cheery hue, the colour of so many beautiful wildflowers but also of many of the small creatures that share our world with us, like …

The migrant Clouded yellow butterfly (Colias croceus), which I was lucky enough to see several times in 2025.

The Yellow dung fly (Scathophaga stercoraria) is one of those flies that seems always to be around, often just sitting on a leaf observing its surroundings and the antics of passing humans.

The crab spider Misumena vatia that can change colour to match the flower upon which it sits … or not.

Named for the colour of the male’s attributes but the female/immature Red-veined darter (Sympetrum fonscolombii) is a glorious golden colour.

I would very much have liked to have been able to include Yellow-browed warbler in this selection of yellow-coloured fauna but I managed not to find the one local visitor, despite three times standing staring at the trees where it was meant to be. Oh well, there’s always next year.

Flower crab spiders

26 Wednesday Apr 2023

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British spiders, Crab spider, Misumena vatia, white spider

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.

230426 crab spiders (1)

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?

230426 crab spiders (2)

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!

188/366 Arachnophilia

06 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by sconzani in nature, spiders

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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 …

200706 1 crab spider

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.

200706 2 spider and eggs

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.

200706 3 spider and eggs

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.

200706 6 spider and eggs

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.’

Camouflage

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature

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Bindweed flower, camouflage, Crab spider, Eupeodes corollae, hoverfly, insect camouflage, Misumena vatia, sawfly larve

On the positive side … this Sawfly larva has its colour co-ordination working very well, though maybe needs to work on its choreography.

160823 camouflage (2)

On the negative side … or positive side, depending on whether you’re identifying with the Crab spider (probably Misumena vatia) using the large white Bindweed flower as its lair, or the spider’s victim, a hoverfly (probably Eupeodes corollae).

160823 camouflage (1)