Spider and stabilimentum

garden_spider_out_of_focus.jpg

F spotted this garden spider (Argiope aurantia), which I understand is garden-variety sized, and nowhere near as large as they can get, inbound from his walk the other day.

Thanks!

I, of course, did the kind of point-and-shoot photography where you can’t really tell what you have framed or focused on because the camera is nowhere near your eye.

I did get a couple of decent shots, but I thought this one might be a better reminder of the follies of photography (I like the ring of that…). Especially of spiders.

The zigzag feature of the web: a stabilimentum. Some species make them in spirals, so this is a simple straight-forward type….

4 comments

  1. kayak woman says:

    Thanks for explaining the zigzag. I was thinking, “is that an artifact of the camera or what?”

  2. Pooh says:

    Good shot. I tried like crazy to get a photo of a spider and web last year, but the camera kept focusing on the brick/stone wall of the house behind the spider, and not the spider. The web was right next to where I parked my car, and was there for several days, even though it seemed like there was some attachment to the car.

  3. Sammy says:

    An important feature of the shot (no reason you should know this) is the looming ginkgo tree in the background. It’s female and currently dropping fruit/seeds/whatchucallit, but that’s another story….

  4. jcb says:

    Expelliarmus stabilimentum! Hey wait, wasn’t there supposed to be a magic “poof” or something?