Monday 16 August 2010

Spiders and birds

Wasp Spider Argiope bruennichi (David Fettes)
Grey clouds and a blustery north easterly wind greeted me at The Scrubs this morning. I was in the company of photographer and great influence David Fettes. I've known David for 10 years and he was the first person to encourage me to live the dream, years before my dream was born.

It was his first time on the Scrubs and I was guiding him around. By the time we had got to the grassland and met newbie Scrubber Neville Smith, the avian door swung open and brought forth a couple of small presents. Namely, our first Snipe of the autumn flying north and a lovely Yellow Wagtail that flew in and landed in the grassland.

Perhaps the most interesting find was the rather attractive spider depicted above. It was massive and of the like I've never seen before. Remember, I spend most of my time looking up.

3 comments:

JRandSue said...

Hi David
Check out our blog, we have found quite a large colony of these recently in Cornwall.
They are Wasp Spiders and much more common in Europe. John

holdingmoments said...

These seem to be popping up everywhere recently, but I still haven't seen one yet.

John Arbon said...

Hi Dave John at London wetland centre we have had alarge number of said spiders for a bout 7 years definatly a climate change species moveing north at an alarming rate
fave food crickets