Family Fun

We visited our friends, Peter & Yuliya & their two boys, Sasha & Max just before Christmas... We had a fantastic photoshoot with them:

They have the strangest spider installation in the bushes at the entrance to their home.. These spiders have taken up residence & joined web-forces to create a massive mega-web:

Marbled Orb Weaver

Watering our garden the other day, I frightened a HUGE spider that ran across its web and into hiding when the hose water found it. I finished watering & found that the spider had re-claimed its position in the center of its web...I fetched my camera:

...& looked it up online:

One feature of the webs of some orb-weavers is the stabilimentum, a crisscross band of silk through the center of the web... The band has been hypothesized to be a lure for prey, a marker to warn birds away from the web and a camouflage for the spider when it sits in the center of the web. However, recent research suggests that the stabilimentum actually decreases the visibility of the silk to insects, thus making it harder for prey to avoid the web. The orb-web consists of a frame and supporting radii overlaid with a sticky capture spiral, and the silks used by orb-weaver spiders have exceptional mechanical properties to withstand the impact of flying prey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orb-weaver_spider