Happy Snappy Ecologist: Garden spider

I know autumn is here when my face gets tickled by floating webs as I walk along our local railway line. Suddenly there are spiders everywhere!

The most numerous in my local area are the European garden spider (or garden orb weaver). As the name suggests they are found in most English gardens but also in the wider countryside. Every year at least one specimen develops a habit of spinning its beautiful, circular web across my front door at night, completely undeterred by the blundering human running out each morning and straight through it!

The garden orb or Araneus diadematus is easily distinguished by the white cross on its back. There is quite a bit of colour variation between individuals as these photos will show.

So......here is a lovely amber coloured specimen on heather.

....moving on to a kind of chestnut brown.......

......and finally a darker brown with prey.

Aren't they a beautiful spider? Each one slightly different in colour and thus very engaging to photograph!

This next picture is the underside of a female (always got to try and zoom in that bit further) and in the middle there at the top, it shows the epigyne (the external part of the female spiders genitalia). Now last week I wouldn't have know what this was but I had the great good fortune to catch an extremely amusing thread about it on a spider Facebook group when someone thought they'd photographed a 'spider's willy'!

Thank you for looking. Photos of the other spider species I've found this week to follow!

Happy Snappy Ecologist: Rambling through nature makes me very Happy and I can't resist getting Snappy with my hand-held Panasonic Lumix FZ45 with clip on Raynox 150 macro lens. This helps me share my love of Ecology with others and reminds me to identify and find out more about different species when I get home. Enjoy!