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81
Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Lynn on August 29, 2023, 10:41:33 AM »
I started practicing exposure therapy for my fear of spiders some years back. There was a time when even seeing that picture would have made my stomach quiver and my heart thud. I can now zoom in and stare at them to see the details. Tennessee isn't that far from Georgia so I'm going to keep an eye out for them.

Orb weaver spiders love my door frames. One year, all summer long, I had to open my front and back door cautiously and look around before I stepped outside, because they would make a web and sit right in the middle of it. That was when I started the exposure therapy lol. I almost knocked myself out trying to knock down one of the webs with my broom. The spider came flying at me because the silk stuck to the broom. ;D
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Vijaya on August 29, 2023, 12:37:17 AM »
The natural world is filled with delights. Grateful for people who share beauty--I've always loved spiders and their webs. And that pretty yellow is visible in your picture. Spun gold!
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by djmills on August 28, 2023, 04:03:21 PM »
That spider is beautiful. And the yellow web.
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on August 28, 2023, 03:58:30 PM »
I apologize for filling this thread up with spider stuff, but these Joros have fascinated me.  It's not every day that I get to play naturalist and study a new species.  Is this how John J. Audobon felt all the time?  It's exciting.   :banana:

The yellow color of the Joro's silk isn't always apparent.  In fact, their webs often seem like the same white color as other spider's webs.  To see the yellow, I've found that I need to view the orb from the side.  That way, all the strands are bunched up in my field of view, and my retina picks up the color better.  I suspect that the yellow coloring will get stronger as the spiders mature and the webs get bigger and have thicker strands, but that's just a hypothesis on my part.  We'll know in a couple of months, I guess.

In the photo below, the web is viewed from the side, making the yellow color of the strands more apparent than it would be otherwise.  Hopefully it will be visible on y'all's computer screens or devices.


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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: What Did You Blog About Today
« Last post by Vijaya on August 22, 2023, 04:34:58 AM »
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on August 18, 2023, 05:35:29 PM »
I took this photo a few days ago.  One of the local Joros munching on a winged insect:





You can see what appear to be a cast-off exoskeleton in the web from when the spider last molted.

You might also notice that the spider's trophies and old skin are on a separate plane in the web, not the same plane as the spider itself.  That's the web's three-dimensional aspect I mentioned earlier.
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: What Did You Blog About Today
« Last post by Vijaya on August 10, 2023, 02:33:54 AM »
I've been home for a month but finally have caught up to make my post on my trip to Chicago.
https://vijayabodach.blogspot.com/2023/08/chicago.html
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Jeff Tanyard on August 03, 2023, 05:47:09 PM »
Thanks Jeff. I'll keep a lookout for them. They sound lovely--spun gold!


There's definitely a bit of elegance about them.  It's easy to see why the Japanese are fond of them.
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Bar & Grill [Public] / Re: The Garden Thread that two people wanted
« Last post by Vijaya on August 03, 2023, 10:56:23 AM »
Thanks Jeff. I'll keep a lookout for them. They sound lovely--spun gold! Charleston is ground zero for hive beetles--also brought from a shipping container. This year, when our bees split, the remaining ones didn't do so well and it got overrun with those hive beetles. Our bees didn't even have a chance to make a new queen. Sigh.
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