More Golden Orb Webs!

 
 

 

 

Summer's here and the spiders are getting fat, getting daily bigger and fatter in fact. And thriftily bundling up a healthy supply of ready meals for hard times ahead.

 

 

 

Here are a couple more of our resident Golden Orb Weaving Spiders.

It's all about the web

 

The spider webs in the garden, that is.

Here's a St Andrews Cross Spider (Argiope keyserlingi), and a Dome-web Spider (Cyrtophora moluccensis) - arrowed - in our garden this morning

More garden spiders

 

 

It's peak spider season in our garden right now. Here's a Dome-Web Spider (Cyrtophora moluccensis), a type of tent-web spider.

And this one's a St Andrews Cross spider (Argiope keyserlingi)

 

 

Lots of Golden Orb Weavers (Nephila plumipes).

 

 A female on the left, a male below.

Reluctant swimmers

I've been working diligently on the pool. It's no longer the cloudy pond we inherited, with its chemistry all out of whack. It's pretty well perfect: chemistry spot on, and water clean and crystal clear. (And nice water temperatures too!)

Maybe that's why it's suddenly become attractive to uninvited guests! A heavily pregnant Blue-Tongued Skink (Tiliqua scincoides) fell in the other day. Don't think she was planning a water birth for her offspring. She had to be fished out, and lived to tell the tale. We saw the slimmed-down version a few days later, and the baby blue-tongue too!

 

 

 

Not such a happy ending though for the Brown Huntsman Spider (Heteropoda jugulans) who was at the bottom of the pool this morning. She was past resuscitation. I was a bit careful when handling this one. At first glance it could have been a Funnelweb. These are notorious for their underwater frolics, and are said to be able to survive in the water quite happily. Their venom is of course rather deadly. 

Spider spider