Spiders

August is "Spider Month". It seems that spiders go hyperactive making large webs in late summer.

I found this spectacular "Arrowhead (or Triangulate) Orbweaver" (Verrucosa arenata) dangling from the brim of my hat. Most of the orb weavers I encounter (quite literally) while walking the paths through our woods are "Spined Micrathena" spiders. This was a new species to me.

An example of the large web of the Spined Micrathena.

Every once in a while, I manage to bump my camera into the "creative" mode and it takes a series of bizarrely colored photos. This time, I liked how it caught the web details. I did, however, change the photo to black-and-white rather than the strange deep blue hue the camera give. (This is the same web as the previous photo.)

I finally got this wren house hung in a tree last spring. Wrens never found it, but a funnel-web weaver spider sure did. Yesterday the large spider was half-way out of the bird house, but today I couldn't coax it out.