Lovely spider!

A friend  sent me this photo a little while ago and I think it would look good on the Wildlife section of our community website. So I've sent it for publication.  Fantastic I would say!  A common spider,  found in her garden. It changes its colour (slowly)  to suit its background but it hasn't got it right yet this time! There should be one in your garden  right now! I believe it to be a female Crab Spider, Misumena vatia.

 The male is smaller and brown! Typical.

Phlogophora meticulosa and young spiders

Found in our green house resting during the day and looking very splendid was an Angle Shades moth, which I hope is a correct identification.

 The photo below was sent to me, taken by a mobile phone and showing a fairly common newly  batch of newly hatched spiders in another garden. I've seen similar in our own garden. Its fascinating how they all keep together and if you gently touch the group they usually disperse but eventually come back together again. I assume there must be a high mortality rate or we would be overrun by them by now!

The second photo shows a  very young gropup of garden spiders from a nother garden and sent to me.Not sure what the species but its often seen like this in our garden too.

Spider. Smallest and oldest

BBC News has the story behind the presentation of a 53 million year old, 1mm spider found in a piece of amber in France.

Click .here

Photography for wild flowers and plants ( and bugs)

Yesterday's photographic workshop was a great success. The 18 participants where all SWT members I believe, (although that wasn't a condition for attending), and all agreed that it was well organised and a good format for learning something new about taking better photograph's, especially of flowers . I'm hoping to collect a few of the best pictures so we can share them around.
Meanwhile I am showing here some of my efforts. What I learnt above everything else was that I need to learn a great deal more about my Cannon's capabilities so that I can make much more use of them. Thinking hard about the subject and how to position the camera , the depth of focus, the need for a better tripod than my present rather elementary one, and much else. So if you bear that in mind when you view my examples I would be grateful.( I'll add some identification details later and dont forget you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them once or twice)

 

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Spiders. Walnut orb- weaver. Nuctenea umbratica

I think its the time of year for watching spiders. Their webs are very obvious on a misty morning and that's why I found myself taking a few photos.

 Here is one taken in our garden shed at about 11 pm using a torch to try to focus on a quite strange looking black spider I noticed as I was putting our lawn mower away. That's my excuse for a poor picture. I am fairly sure I found its identification on the web site linked here.

Part of the description says that this spider shuns the light and hides at day. Sure enough when I went back next day it could not be seen. It is also one of the few UK spiders which can give a bite similar to a wasp sting so I will not be getting much closer. Its body looked quite like a walnut shell and quite unlike any other spider I've seen round here.