November 9th, 2006
river spiders
If you’re thinking, “What the heck?” — you’re not alone. I happened upon the above Black Widow spider while trying to photograph some small gray Fishing spiders that were perched on rocks and gliding across the surface of the water along a river in central Oregon in late September. The gray spiders (see below) looked like some small species of Dolomedes and were behaving much as I’d expect them to, but what about that Black Widow?
I haven’t had much to do with Black Widows in the past as they aren’t usually found up here in the north. I have photographed one before though — was asked to take some shots of one that came in on some grapes and ended up in a natural history museum up here. I didn’t know they liked to get their feet wet — and perhaps they usually don’t — but this one didn’t seem to mind. Its pose almost reminded me more of some of the Dolomedes I’ve photographed in the past. So, what’s it up to? Opinions and guesses are most welcome.
I’m also not sure which species of Widow (Latrodectus) this would be. I did some checking around and am still unsure. It had what looked to be a couple of faint red marks along the center of the dorsum, which I take is common to the Northern Black Widow (Latrodectus variolus). I did use a small twig to try to turn the spider over so that I could take some photos of the underside of its abdomen. I managed to get a couple of brief looks, but the spider wasn’t in a cooperative mood, so I couldn’t hold the twig and shoot a photo quick enough before the spider flipped upright again. However, from the my brief glimpses, I’d say that the red hourglass on the abdomen looked to be divided across the center, rather than entirely red like the spider that I photographed at the museum.
By the way, after messing around with the twig and the spider for a little while, I wandered along the shore and mentioned to my travel pal, Wilbur, that I’d found a Black Widow in the water on the shore and described what I’d been up to. He paused in the middle of taking a photo, scowled (in what seemed like mild disapproval), and said, “You do know you’ll get pretty sick if you get bitten by one of those.” I shrugged, shot him a grin and said, “Yup… but don’t worry….I won’t take any chances.” He shook his head as he turned back to his work. I believe I heard him mumbling something about us being in the middle of nowhere away from any hospitals . . .
Tags: Oregon, Black Widow, Latrodectus, Dolomedes