This morning's dew revealed a multitude, literally thousands of spiders in the trees surrounding our home. It was very difficult to capture more than a hint of this eerie sight, as the sky, lack of contrast, and lack of scope just couldn't come close to duplicating the experience.
Underside of one small limb on one tree.
[img]https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4026/4652752941_57190a7534_b.jpg[/img]
One dead limb, covered in 20-30 webs, probably less than 2% of the webs on this one tree. Each web holds a single tiny spider. This large community of small spiders appears to be a single species that is often associated with oak trees.
[img]https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/4653370974_304d4d9ca5_b.jpg[/img]
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hendi_alex
- Super Green Thumb
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- Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina
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rainbowgardener
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hendi_alex
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 3604
- Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 7:58 am
- Location: Central Sand Hills South Carolina
I just marked it a priviledge to be able to see this large community of spiders, which are never very obvious, except when a heavy dew shows the thousands of webs. One thing for sure, the spiders would not be there unless there were many times more that number of mosquitoes, gnats, no-see-ums, and other flying/biting critters.
There are only a few spiders that I discourage from taking residence on our property. I constantly cull the multitude of black widows that live in about every open dark space available. Thankfully, they do prefer to live outside the house. And although beneficials, I clean the spiders and webs from outside the house a couple of times per summer, usually let the orb weavers stay, since they are not too messy. They are moved from time to time however, as I am spider phobic and do not like walking directly into a web and have a large spider stick to my chest worse still, my face. My wife is the sole member of the spider rescue team. She catches and relocates spiders, if they are too large, from inside the house. We usually leave the various jumping spiders alone inside, they don't build messy webs and they help hold down the insects that move inside.
There are only a few spiders that I discourage from taking residence on our property. I constantly cull the multitude of black widows that live in about every open dark space available. Thankfully, they do prefer to live outside the house. And although beneficials, I clean the spiders and webs from outside the house a couple of times per summer, usually let the orb weavers stay, since they are not too messy. They are moved from time to time however, as I am spider phobic and do not like walking directly into a web and have a large spider stick to my chest worse still, my face. My wife is the sole member of the spider rescue team. She catches and relocates spiders, if they are too large, from inside the house. We usually leave the various jumping spiders alone inside, they don't build messy webs and they help hold down the insects that move inside.
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