Blug - Arachnids in my garden (and yours)

There's not much effort put into naming spiders, they are either described by the web they build or what they look like - e.g. sheet web spiders, tunnel web, nursery web, orb web (those webs we mainly associate spiders with like the web above). Then there's the square ended crab, two-spined, bird dropping, jumping, white tailed etc etc. Yep - all in my garden, and yours. Through a macro lens you find that they can actually be quite cute, colourful, pretty and fugly.

Night time is when most of them come out to play - I have new neighbours who may be regretting moving next to a mad woman who wanders around the garden at night with a torch and camera.

Fact: some spiders make their web at night, catch their dinner if they are lucky, then recycle the web by eating it before daylight

The different types I share the garden with

Orbweavers - all the spiders below are 'Knobbled' Orbweavers, except for the last one which is a Silver Orbweaver. The Knobbleds seem to manage a degree of camouflage to match their surroundings. The second one from clockwise lives on my garage window, and the fifth clockwise lives in my washing line.

Next are the weird ones that I didn't even realize were spiders before now:

From clockwise top left - two-spined spiders (small one is the male), another two-spined, a square-ended crab spider, a bird dropping spider, another square-ended crab and the back view of a bird dropping.

And here are some more common ones that you would have seen at yours:

First row - bronze hopper, cobweb spider, white porch spider

Second row - black-headed jumping, cyclops jumping, grey house

Third row - white-banded jumping, grey house, common house

And then there's those that may make you squirm: look away now if you are arachnophobic

Nursery Web - these are the ones that build an enclosed house on a plant, often gorse. You don't often see the big mamas, but don't fret, they are lurking nearby, guarding their babies...

Sheetweb - Normally builds those huge messy webs in the bush - although this big mother has made a web above my bathroom window.

Vagrant - this huge girl was under a piece of wood

And we can't leave out every ones favourite, the much maligned white-tailed spider

And a late addition below - this Holoplatys appressuss, a jumping spider that succeeded in a very ambitious hunt on my window sill

#spiders #web #garden