An Australian reader sent me this photo of a redback, the Aussie version of Latrodectus. So pretty! And with an egg sac!

That reminds me…this is a big week in the lab, I hope. My second generation black widows are looking ready for breeding, so that means I have to prepare the nuptials. I’m moving the females to a larger, cleaner container and giving them time to make a cozy web today. Tomorrow I’m giving them a feast — gotta fill ’em up so they aren’t hungry when a visitor comes calling. Then on Friday I’m introducing them to second generation males.

I’m a little nervous about that. As usual, males are less common than females — more of them die during development. But the big concern is sexual dimorphism. Latrodectus males are so much daintier and distinctly tinier than the females, so it could be a bloodbath in two days. I’ll record video of the event, and maybe if it isn’t too disappointing I’ll post it then.

I walked down the road to the mighty White River, a fast moving stream that descends from the Cascades carrying a load of glacial silt, which is how it gets its name. I had to stop and take a photo.

That lucky spider has that view 24-7.

I came home this afternoon to find swarms of dispersing spiderlings — the trees and shrubs were dotted with these tiny little guys on skeins of silk trying to spread out and find new homes.

It’s October, you dopes. It’s getting cold (although this week we’re having a surge of warmer weather), it’ll snow sometime in the near future, unless you’re looking for a safe place to hunker down and overwinter, this doesn’t seem like a smart strategy to me.

I found a nice big orange spider last night. Halloween is coming!

Orange Marbled Orbweaver (Araneus marmoreus)

Today I learned about the Vampire Spider, Evarcha culicivora. I was dubious at first. Spiders don’t have the piercing mouthparts most blood drinkers have; also, venom isn’t going to be particularly useful in slurping blood from a cow or whatever. But then I saw their color scheme, and obviously, this is how a vampire should dress.

Red and black, very tasteful.

Then I learned how they do it. They’re drinking blood indirectly — they wait to catch Anopheles mosquitos that have just had a blood meal, and then do the normal feeding behavior of spiders, killing and injecting them with venom and enzymes and sucking up their guts, it’s just that they like their bug juice with a bit of mammalian marinara.

As a bonus, the spiders find the scent of blood to be an aphrodisiac.

Halloween is in 5 weeks, are you ready?

I cleaned up their container because it was choked with silk. They seemed kind of sulky afterwards, but look, clean soil, and I propped up a clam shell to give them a nice shelter. What did they do? They coated everything with silk! I can’t even see into their hiding space because the silk is nearly opaque!

I think the evidence is clear that they’ve entered their spider teens: sullen and sulky, their room is incredibly messy, and they really want their privacy.

We don’t have air conditioning, which means we don’t have the house buttoned down tight in the summer, which means the occasional fly wanders in and heads to the kitchen, always the kitchen. But they don’t last long, because we’ve got a tangle of cobwebs under our cupboards, which are occupied by fierce fly-killers. This is a Pholcus phalangioides caught in the act of ‘explaining’ to a housefly that we don’t care for their kind comin’ round these parts.

I didn’t notice the teeny tiny gnat snared in the web by the spider’s hind leg when I took the picture.

You probably assume you can recognize black widows by the red hourglass on the underside, like this:

But the juveniles and other variant forms can look like this:

And you might as well give up, because in their natural environment they may not pose obligingly for you.

Those are all young’uns, the spawn of the few adults I got this summer. They’re thriving!

The headline says, “Giant spiders the size of rats make comeback in UK after nearing extinction, RSPB says“. Nah, I know these spiders. That’s Dolomedes. We call them fishing spiders here in the colonies.

Fen raft spiders starting to appear on the Dyke networks of the Lower Waveney Valley. This one was battling the wind even on this sheltered Dyke line. @suffolkwildlife @WaveneyCott @BBCCountryfile @HeritageFundM_E @SWTCarltonMarsh pic.twitter.com/pbMh8oGC2W

— Suffolk Wildlife Trust North East Reserves (@SWT_NE_Reserves) April 9, 2024

They are large spiders, but not as big as rats…unless you’ve got nothing but stunted, runty, starveling rats out there in the UK, scarcely big enough to put onna stick.

I’m surprised that they (the spiders, not the rats) were endangered — they seem to be doing fine here, in a part of the country with lots of wetlands that get some protection (but not enough) because they’re a haven for game birds. It’s good to hear that Dolomedes is making a comeback, though, in part because the zoos are raising more spiders.

That looks familiar, that’s how I raise my spiders. I hope they have many more vials than that, if they’re hoping to repopulate the whole of Britain.

I don’t think even minuscule UK rats would fit in those vials, you know.