Spider-scoping

Bird News: Ibsley Water - ruff 1 juvenile, dunlin 3, knot 1, ringed plover 1 juvenile, black tern 1 adult.

I was busy with meetings for the whole morning, but at lunchtime there was reason to get the telescope out. In fact Michelle even took a look, now you might wonder what we were looking at, it is clear Michelle is hardly looking far across Ibsley Water.

In fact the target was not a bird but and this is a first for me, a spider. There are few occasions when using a telescope to look at a spider would seem even slightly sensible, but this assuredly was one of them. I even got a passable digi-scoped picture of it. As it is a raft spider it does have the advantage of being large, but it must be one of very few British spiders that you would even use a telescope to observe.

One interesting thing that the picture shows is the strands of silk, forming an untidy web. Many of the sources I have looked up imply that these spiders only spin a web when they lay eggs and hunt without one. This web looks like a hunting aid though, so perhaps they use silk more often than is thought.