I’ve been watching a spider on our front porch of late. Actually maybe two. In mid-Summer I noticed, upon coming home from somewhere after dark, that there was a very large spider hanging in the upper left-hand back corner of the porch. It freaked me out at first, it was so grotesque to see it hanging there upside-down in an ugly mess of web that wasn’t any pattern at all, just a big cluster of nasty tangles. Watching it from then on I knew it was a night-habit spider, it hung there by night and by first light it was crammed as deep into the corner as it could get.

I got a decentish picture of it one night.

After some time, it dissapeared. It wasn’t there. I checked a few nights in a row, no sign of it anywhere. I didn’t know what kind of spider it was. I wasn’t able to ID it on the internet, for some reason.

I have since came to understand that it is a variety of a Common Orb Weaver, though that one just stayed up in the corner by itself. I haven’t yet found any info linking this type of spider to different habits as such … but here is the rest of the story.

After an absence of Spider on Porch for a few days or more, suddenly there was something new to see. Between the front posts to the railing on the right, looking out from the doorway, was a spider on a web.

The web was stretched beautifully between the posts. An OBVIOUS orb-weaver web. The spider prefers to sit in the middle when there is no work to be done, and has such a classic “spider” look hanging upsidedown like that on the web.

My ID of it as an Orb Weaver only really came for certain the other day, On Enature I was able to find “Common Orb Weaver” when previously I hadn’t been able to find it, for whatever reason. The actual picture they have is close enough to what my spiders have looked like.

The kicker is that both spiders I had on my porch looked alike, only the first one was bigger, the second one smaller. Their web habits were totally different though. In any case, if I get more info I’ll update this paragraph and other ones that need it.

I’ve taken photographs a few times now, of the active spider. Nighttime is a hard time to get a flash picture of a spider and web. Most of the pictures the spider is washed out in color, features not true to life, or totally nonexistent. I really like many of the photos, and it’ll be a hard task to decide WHICH ONES to put here. I can’t possibly put them all, half or even a quarter of them up here. I’ve taken a lot of photos :rolleyes: [having a fast SLR Digital is super! No wasted film, snap away all you want!]

I don’t have any special gadgets to work with my camera, so these are all just done using auto and manual settings on the dial of my Canon Digital Rebel, as well as manually focusing. I really need to dig out the old tripod, which has seen better days. I’ve only really used it with a video camera, and it’s gotten knocked around in our lack of storage house, and the legs might not stand up so good now. In any case, shake is one thing I need to get rid of in some of these shots, the lense is opened so long and they’d be gorgeous without the slight movements that makes for one super-multi-super-over-imposed spider.

I’ll work on getting some web versions of the web and spider pictures up here As Soon As I Can, but no promises for today, though I might be able to pressure myself into it.

I’m getting hyped up on learning more about spiders I encounter and this is the first one to really get me super-active in watching and snapping pictures. We watch when we can at night, and hope for a moth to fly into the web, and we’ve see a few, and one time it was a moth bigger than the spider, a hairy brown moth. Ick. She, the spider, I’m calling it a she for now, jumped right on him immediately, and started to spin him around and around. I got closer and sure enough I could see her silk coming out, multiple strands like ia wide connected band of filaments, it was really interesting. The children were with me and saw it too. After a bit of spinning the moth took on a mummified appearance, being encased completely in spider silk. The spider then grabbed the moth package a bit different, and quickly climbed up her web with it, to the middle. She put the package down and did something to attach it there, then did what looked like a favorite meal, started to “whatever” the package to eat out the juice of the moth, if that’s what she does. Entirely facinating it was. I didn’t take pictures then. I recorded it with the video in my head. I can relive it anytime I want, anywhere I would be.