Saturday, April 24, 2010

The golden spiderlings

While mowing the lawn this afternoon I noticed the lid on my composter was askew, despite the paving block I have on top to keep it from blowing off. When I went to adjust it I noticed a spider web on the block and the lid, apparently clogged with pollen. Then I noticed that the pollen was moving. I went back in the house and grabbed my camera.

The things that I thought were grains of pollen were actually baby spiders, about a millimeter and a half long. Each was golden yellow with a black spot on the abdomen, the rear section.


On closer inspection of the photos, the black spots appear to be spinnerets, and the spiders' eyes appear to be red - some of them, anyway.


I don't know what variety of spider these spiderlings will grow into. Most of them are fated not to grow up at all. Life is harsh for little spiderlings.

10 comments:

hedera said...

FABULOUS photos! I'm so jealous.

Did you know that one of the Nero Wolfe novels is entitled "The Golden Spiders"?? (You might at that.)

D.B. Echo said...

Heh. I didn't, actually!

Linkmeister said...

Not only that, but it was the first novel turned into a teleplay for the A&E series with Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin. Those were damned good; if you've never seen them, I recommend you do.

Donald John Williams said...

911! Call Markie!

D.B. Echo said...

Don, these are Mark's competitors!

...tom... said...

...

'The Golden Spiderlings'

I was going to say, before seeing the other comments: 'Hey, I think I read that one..!!'


Spiders do not creep me out ...too much anyway.

But I think I would be unpleasantly surprised if I came upon something like that inside my house without warning.

Good thing those were outside ...cool there.


...tom...
.

Anonymous said...

:) Yellow-sac spiders. Those things can leave some nasty bites!

Anonymous said...

Yellow-sac's are 5-10mm, these are 1-1.5mm.

Anonymous said...

Those are NOT yellow sac spiders.

I came across your post because just yesterday, an identical little yellow spider was crawling on my sleeve and I'm on the hunt to figure what it was.

In reality they are baby Garden Spiders. Just google it.

D.B. Echo said...

Awesome! Thanks for the information. They sure were cute! I haven't come across a bunch of baby spiders like this since then, but maybe I haven't been looking at the right time.