The Promise of 10 Spiders…

Back at the trail beside Republic Polytechnic! Largely because one of the AP regulars said that there were a lot of spiders and promised that I’d find at least 10 spiders if I went with them! True enough, there were lots of spiders — the common ones! lol. And many of the same species, found at least 3 wolf spider mothers carrying egg sacs in the same bush.

#1 Greeted by a Tiger Beetle at the entrance, blue elongated body with orange legs.

#2 First spider! Should be a Crab Spider, but I’m not entirely sure.

#3 Having some fun animating the scene, it gives you a 3D feel of the spider

#4 Head shot of the crab spider. So not chio, completely black! lol

#5 One of the wolf spider mothers. This was unique as the babies had already hatched. No babies to be found (very odd) and the sac was still dangling. All that I found were dew drops on it’s body.

#6 A tiny male spider (anyone help with ID?) with very vivid colours! It had a horizontal web and was “floating” above the web, and occasionally looking down at the web. The black “boxing gloves” are it’s palps, aka male organs.

#7 Closer look at the palps

#8 Started dancing around on it’s web

#9 Found a Red Tent Spider Cyrtophora unicolor (Doleschall) 1857. This was a beautiful one with distinct patterns and deep red legs. It constructed a massive 3 dimensional web with irregular shapes and random twigs and leaves dangling from it. This fella would usually be hidden under a leaf in the center of the web. Difficult to get a good shot due to the odd angles (usually facing down) and complexity of the web. Luckily, this one was relatively near to the edge. The regulars at AP used to call this the rotten strawberry. 😛

#10 Front view, snuggling very tightly into the leaf

#11 Observing the details of it’s face

#12 An even closer look… with all the hairy details.

#13 Say NO!

#14 Say YES!

#15 The sun came out and we managed to get brighter backgrounds

#16 We could get various different backgrounds just by changing the camera’s angle

So….! Nope I did not get to shoot 10 spiders. But I did see more than 10, if many of the same species were counted. I also gave some subjects a miss, such as a few of the giant orb weavers, and the huntsman spider with egg sac (should hatch soon!).


The complete album can be viewed here.

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