Swinging crane fly

A crane fly got itself caught in a web this evening. This wasn't noteworthy by itself, as the spiders here often catch crane flies, but what made this catch funny was that the end of the web the crane fly was caught in wasn't attached to anything; as a result, the crane fly swung on the web as though it were a pendulum.

Fortunately for the crane fly, the spider who built the web was nowhere to be found. I used the time to cut the web and free the crane fly, who promptly started buzzing around the nearest light source. The crane fly will be safe provided that it doesn't fly into another web.

The fly in the room

Flies are experts at entering houses via small openings, such as a crack in the wall or a barely-open window. When it comes to getting out, however, flies seem to be incompetent at this, even when you open a door for them.

At the moment, there is a fly in my room, who has been buzzing around for the past two hours. While my door is open and the window it came in from is also open, it can't or won't fly out despite it wanting to leave. It has this odd obsession with flying around the light as though it's a moth.

I'm not sure how to persuade the fly to go in the direction of the window or the door; I don't particularly want it flying around all night keeping me awake nor do I want it to become meal for one of the spiders who lives in my room.

The spiders

This summer has been friendly to spiders. I have never seen so many around the house before; mostly they hang around in the ceiling corners to catch bugs and procreate with other spiders. What they don't appear to have been doing is catch the flies, who have also been having a good summer; nearly every day a couple of flies buzz around the house and are generally pests. Since there aren't screens in windows here, they fly in all the time through them.

Cold web

The cold and misty morning illuminated this web, which I would have otherwise missed on a clear day:

By the time the afternoon rolled around, the mist had cleared and the temperature had risen significantly. I did not see the spider who resides in the above web.

Spider in the corner

I prefer it when spiders - especially ones the size of the spider in the following picture - stay in corners and keep to themselves:

This breed of spider is both large and fast. I don't know what the exact species is and I've never seen them outside my grandparents house. This one caused me to jump when it sprinted across the floor of a bedroom. It has since decided to camp in a corner in the hallway and appears to be happy down there.

Spider abundance

The mild weather means that we here in the United Kingdom are to expect an influx of spiders over the next few weeks, as there are more instects available for them to eat:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-29283020

I have wondered why I've been seeing more spiders than usual, even before I left Northamptonshire. Provided that the spiders keep to themselves and stay away from beds, I'm fine with them being in the house!

Spider's demise

Remember the spider in the bathtub, which fought a moth? I'm saddened to report that the spider has since died; my brother found its corpse in the tub a few days ago.

I hope that the spider's death was due to old age and not starvation. I note starvation because the tub doesn't seem like a decent place to catch insects for food.

I also hope that the spider had a happy life; I don't know if arachnids have any standards that define a "happy life", but if they do, I hope that the bathtub spider met them.

The spider in the tub

I thought I'd take some pictures of the spider that currently lives in the bathtub:

Whoa...it's large and scary! Now for some perspective...

Here is the spider next to a disconnected shower head. As you can see, the spider isn't that big once the camera is no longer zoomed onto it. I used my main camera because I didn't want to annoy the spider by putting my phone close to it and because my camera takes higher quality zoomed shots.

As you can also see, the bathtub is dusty from disuse. I think it'll need to be cleaned once the spider has moved on or been evicted.

Moth vs. Spider

There is a spider that lives in the bathtub; last night, that spider was disturbed by a large moth that had flown into the bathroom. For some bizarre reason, the moth thought it would be a great idea to fly around and land on the spider's home in the tub, which annoyed the spider and caused it to attack the moth.

It was an interesting fight: until last night, I had never observed a spider engage in combat with another creature. The spider appeared to be defending itself rather than trying to eat the moth; in the end, I assume that the moth flew away from the spider and out of the bathroom, as there was no evidence of the moth in the morning.

As for why there is a spider living in the bathtub, we prefer to shower and there is no shower in the tub. The spider is not at risk of being washed away.

Spiders and insects

It used to be the case that whenever an insect or a spider came into the house, I would kill it (especially the latter). As far as I was concerned, they were unwelcome inside and my only way to deal with them was to kill them. In recent years, however, I have changed from killing insects and spiders that come into the house to catching them in a glass and releasing them outside.

Why the change? The main reason is because I didn't like that I was killing innocent creatures. Insects and spiders come into the house in search of food or warmth, not because they are intentionally trying to hurt me or anyone else. In fact, I don't think they've ever harmed me in the comfort of my house! Believe it or not, I felt bad about what I had done to members of their respective species'.

The second reason was because, before we left Oregon, there was a spider living in my brother's room behind his bookcase. It had been there for a long time and we had given it a name, although it's doubtful that it knew or cared about that. No, the spider just kept to itself and caught flies; it didn't bother us and we didn't bother it.

For these reasons, I now make the effort to rescue and release these beings rather than kill them. They have every right to exist as we do and they shouldn't be needlessly slaughtered for what they are.

The camera-shy spider

Dad and I spent the day in Nottingham at my grandparents' house. We were there to see them and to replace an outside light on their garage.

We needed a ladder to reach the light. While Dad was busy up the ladder and in between the moments when I was passing tools up to him, I watched a small spider dangle itself out of its home in one of the ladder's grooves. It did this for several minutes before I took my phone out and attempted to take a picture of it. That's when the spider disappeared back into its groove.

This happened a second time before the spider either gave up or wasn't even paying attention to what I was doing in the first place and had found something else interesting outside its groove (the latter is far more realistic). My pictures of the spider were worthless, however, as the spider appears as a small, blurry dot and isn't identifiable. Still, it's a little funny to think that the spider was merely camera-shy.

I should note that during the times when I was attempting to photograph the spider, Dad wasn't up the ladder!

The ice webs redux

Remember those ice webs from last month? With the return of the freezing weather the ice webs are back. Here are some new pictures:

In that last picture, the central pole for our washing line/net isn't straight, hence why it looks as though I didn't hold the camera even.

The ice webs

The cold weather has given me the opportunity to photograph these frost-covered spider webs on our shed:

I think these webs are magnificent; I'm pleased to have been able get pictures of them.

Another spider, another web

These next two images probably aren't for people who can bear seeing spiders in pictures, let alone in person, but I made these two captures of a spider in our backyard. I was able to get one from the spider's front and the other from its back:

The web was more impressive to see outside these two photographs, as it was expertly built between our shed and the branch of a plant located some six feet away. I use the past tense here because the spider its web are no longer there.

The spider and its web

Dad captured this image of a garden spider who had built her web between our car and the nearby bushes (there was a four foot gap between the car and the greenery):

This is a surprisingly good shot considering the best angle for taking a picture of the spider involved looking into the direction of the incredibly bright morning sun. It was taken with my main camera.

First barbecue for 2012 (again)

As promised, here are some pictures from yesterday's barbecue. Not all are of the barbecue itself, but rather are of a few things around the garden as the barbecue was in progress. Still, I hope you will appreciate the pictures! All of them were taken with my main camera.

This is a flower from the magnolia tree we have in our back garden. It has been blossoming for the past couple of weeks or so thanks to the good weather. Not all of its flowers have open yet, so we can expect to see quite a bit more from the tree.

Ah! This is the chicken cooking on the barbecue. I really like the way the optical zoom on my camera enhances the colour of any pictures taken near maximum zoom.

The sausages barbecuing nicely, with Dad turning them over to ensure all sides are cooked properly. Notice how shiny the sausages are?

A group of flowers growing in our garden. I was sat quite a distance away from the flowers, so this is another image taken with optical zoom.

The burgers were the last pieces of food Dad barbecued. This is another optically zoomed image.

This is a ladybug who survived being caught in a spider's web. As Dad did the barbecuing, we watched an interesting sequence of events: the spider catch the ladybug, the spider and ladybug "duel", then the spider returning into the hole where it came from (bear in mind that the spider was three or four times the size of the bug). The ladybug then spent an hour getting itself out of the web, and then it climbed up the wall to the top of the house. We called it "The One That Got Away".

Web dew

This is a picture my brother took a few weeks ago of a spider's web covered in dew:

Thanks to the dew, the web was visible from afar (well, twenty or thirty feet away). We have seen bigger webs covered in dew, but we were not able to take any pictures of them.