Yellow and Black Garden spider (Argiope aurantia) aka the Writing spider. She turned up outside our kitchen window this morning; fortunately I saw her before my Poor Wife dropped her morning coffee. She's about 2-1/2 inches long overall. I'm hoping for puppies.
8 comments:
at least it's nice and colorful and doesn't have the hourglass of death on its abdomen
I had one of those make it's web in the frame of my bicycle once. I had to seriously nerve myself up to tear it's web out. To this day, if someone says, "I saw a huge spider," I'll ask if it was yellow and black.
I had something similar size-wise last year in a window well, but it had ridges in its exoskeleton that reminded me of a Klingon forehead. Interesting colors too.
"Life in the Undergrowth" spends a fair amount of time with one of these that's been parasitized by a grub. Yours looks quite healthy, though you might be more likely to get cubs.
In the Eastern Caribbean there is a big, bright yellow hairy spider called a money spider. One day while I was living there my downstairs neighbor showed me one he had caught in a jar, just warning me, he said, to shake out my clothes before I put them on because he had found this one on the clothesline. I thanked him for the advice and promptly forgot it until about 20 minutes later when, dressed for work in freshly laundered clothes, I was talking to him at his door and felt something bite me (almost as intense as a bee sting) uh, rearward. I ran back upstairs, frantically unbuttoning and unzipping, and found, in my underwear, a big hairy yellow spider.
Wow, what a beauty! It's true, when they're sizeable, you can't help feeling awed respect - and I'm sure those gorgeous markings are to ward off predators.
A teeny emerald green spider was most insistent last summer about building his/her web (I assume the males build too, at least in some species)between the bottom of our wall-attached mailbox and something or other that was leaning on the wall adjacent - where she was sure to be disturbed by the mailman's vibes daily. Took him/her a good 3/4 days to decide to go elsewhere.
If it's not too inquisitive, do you use a real, old-timey non-digital camera to take your beautiful outdoor pics? I started my first blog a little while ago and would like to post some of my own nature images. I take digital photos pretty well, but I get nostalgic for the classic technology sometimes.
At this very moment, we have one of these beauties just outside the door to our patio. Waiting. Very. Patiently.
We have a similar species here in The Shenandoah Valley, VA. It creates a zig-zag down the center of it's web. A friend mentioned it was to break up the spiders shape which some insects can recognize and avoid.
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