Orb Weaver outside my backdoor molt and wooing

[caligulathegod]

For the past few weeks we've had an Orbweaver hanging outside my back door. We have a line running from the house to the yard that we leash our scotty dog to when he needs to go out to do his business (new house, we don't have a fence up, yet). The spider has made her web on it. The web is huge. It is almost 3 feet across and is gorgeous. She remakes it every night. Last week we caught her molting. I regret not getting pics of her premolt as she was a very pretty orange. Now she's a plainer brown, but is still a looker. Anyway, here's pics of her molting I took. Also, this week she has gotten a suitor. He's a tiny little thing and has made a few attempts to woo her. She's willing but still playing hard to get. Hopefully he'll get his chance in the next few days.

[caligulathegod]

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Here's some glamour shots

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Ok, now there is a male hanging out checking out her new threads.

[caligulathegod]

She seems so intimidating compared to him.

[caligulathegod]

But still, she's so cute, gotta have some of dat...

[caligulathegod]

She got kind of freaked out when the dog came out and ran back to her web before I got pictures of them attempting the actual mating. Hopefully they will be successful tonight. Unfortunately I'm out of town and am going to miss it.

Hope you like the pics.

[Immortal_sin]

wow...those are COOL! She's quite the acrobat :)
It's just amazing how they hang on those slender silk threads.
And the size of the males compared to the females ....ludicrous! It's a wonder they ever mate!

[danread]

I've had an orb web spider in my garden for about a month now, it builds its web between two bushes in the garden. I've been feeding it small crickets evey now and again, which it loves. Here's some pics i took a few weeks ago...

Dan.

[danread]

from the back...

[caligulathegod]

Very nice. My GF said our spider is back to orange-colored like that again and that there is a larger spider from beneath the kitchen window to the air conditioner. She left her car windows rolled down over night and her car got all dewey and the neighbor said she's lucky it didn't get spiders all in it. We've had quite a lot of spiders in the neighborhood lately. He sprays for them. She said that she's not allowed to kill spiders because of me and he said she was too honest, he would have killed them anyway. Bah, I say. Spiders are a natural pesticide. Still, the spiders seem to know we're spider-friendly and have adopted us. Even I have had to tear some down when they block the doorways.

[dennis]

Hey Dan, we have those things here too...

[dennis]

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[danread]

Nice pics dennie, that spider looks very similar to mine, might even be the same species as far as i can tell.

Cheers,

Dan.