March 1st, 2006
The Argiope of Spider Ranch
I suppose I’m running some risk of being branded as at least slightly eccentric for the “garden” that I choose to keep. However, as someone who spends a considerable amount of time studying and photographing insects and spiders, it should come as no great surprise that I do what I can to encourage my subjects to inhabit the gardens, fields and woods around the farm. To that end, we’ve let a considerable section of the yard grow into what we have come to refer to as “Spider Ranch”
Those who aren’t dyed in the wool arachnophobes may be interested in a new section which I’ve just added to my website. It’s a sort of “photo essay” entitled The Argiope of Spider Ranch. It contains a distillation of some of my photos and notes gleaned from three summer’s worth of observation of the multitudes of Argiope spiders which inhabit the gardens here at the farm.
I’ve also created a short QuickTime video clip of a spider spinning an egg case. As per usual, it’s not exactly the stuff of nature documentaries (quality being seriously limited by the medium), but it might be of interest to those who haven’t had a chance to see one of these large spiders in the process of creating an egg case. Note: the video clip is approx. 50 seconds long and about 2.1 MB in size.
If your curiosity about these spiders has been tweaked, or if you just want to gawk and laugh at the chaotic state of the Spider Ranch part of the gardens, then please feel free to check out the new pages. — bev
Tags: argiope, spider, spider ranch