The following image is the basis for the thumbnail of a video I recorded of this spider building her web:
I stumbled across this spider in the middle of building her web, and decided to record the process. I took some stills once the spider was all done, but if you're interested in seeing the spider at work, check out my video:
As always, I try to be somewhat educational in these posts, since I am both an arachnophile and a huge nerd. This spider is obviously an orb weaver, but there are hundreds of species of orb weavers, so not all of them have common names. I know of no common name for this spider specifically, but its scientific name is Verrucosa arenata. Curiously, you may have noticed that the spider is sitting head-up in her web, something that is rare among orb weavers, but is one of the identifying characteristics of this species.
You may have also noticed that I refer to the spider as female. The reason I know that this is a female is simply because of her size. Males of this species get to be little more than half the size of this one. This is typical for spiders, in fact it is exceedingly rare for a male spider to get bigger than an adult female of the same species.
From an artistic perspective, I think spiderwebs are fascinating, especially in lighting like this. For instance, imagine how painstaking the process of replicating this image with paint would be. It can be done, certainly, but it wouldn't be easy.
As you can probably tell, it was a bit breezy out that evening. This affected my video a bit, as the spider kept moving in and out of focus. I hope to eventually film better footage of a spider building an orb web, but with the recent drop in temperature, I will probably not have an opportunity to do so until next year. Not to worry, there is no shortage of spiders!
