A walk in the woods

For our final photo walk, Riekie and I (see previous posts here and here) and Rosie (the dog) went for a walk through a nearby forestry plantation. The day had started off pretty dismal – cold and raining – but it cleared around 9 a.m. and we were then able to go out. Our walk […]

Stung by a wasp update

I thought that the wasp in the first Stung by a wasp installment, had already been killed but the truth is far, far worse. It’s like something out of a horror movie! According to Wikipedia: Spider wasps are long-legged, solitary wasps that use a single spider as a host for feeding their larvae. They paralyze […]

Stung by a wasp

No, thankfully not me, but the unfortunate rain spider below. My roving reporter a.k.a. Willie, came across this when he was out mountain biking on a nearby forestry road the other day. By the time he saw it, the wasp had already killed the spider and was dragging it off. [The photo was taken with […]

A correction and a question

Initially Joan Failo (from The Spider Club) had identified the spider skin in my previous posts Spider Skeleton I and Spider Skeleton II as being that of a female rain spider. On inspection of the close-up photos I took yesterday, she now thinks it may be a male rain spider skin. Which brings me to […]

Spider skeleton II

Yes folks, today we continue the exciting saga of the spider skeleton . . . If you missed episode one you can read it here. Clouded Marble left a comment on the last installment asking whether it was maybe a “real” dead spider and not just the skin left behind after moulting. Being a scientist, […]

Spider skeleton I

On Saturday morning I was coming back from a walk with the dog, when I noticed something interesting near our driveway. Of course, I just had to go inside and get a camera! As I stood there leaning over the flowerbed, apparently taking a photograph of a brick wall, a car stopped close by. I […]

A short story of two White-eyes and a spider

A couple of days ago I was standing on our deck in the late afternoon, watching the sun go down. I saw something fluttering near the garden wall. Hoping that it was the sunbirds I’d been trying to get photos of, I rushed inside to get a camera. It wasn’t the sunbirds after all, but […]