Reflections on a Black Widow
At left, is tight crop of a Black Widow that I found this morning.
If you look closely, you can see my reflection on its back (below the mouth bits — it is upside down).
The ring like reflection is the ring flash on my the Canon 100mm macro lens used to take the picture. The bluish-white blob to the right of that is me; my shirt, mostly.
Same shot. Not so cropped.
This particular Black Widow is living in the neighbor’s bed of clover. She is clearly quite hungry in that Black Widow’s are rarely so aggressive. This one would pop out of her hidey-hole at the slightest bit of motion on the web.
I got this particular shot by using a stick to jiggle the web like an insect would.
Beautiful creature, really. Just wish it didn’t live quite so close to where the neighborhood kids play. Thus, it’ll likely be dead by sundown.
A went back and visited Ms. Widow a bit later and discovered that I could get her to come out in the open by jiggling her web with my finger. Slightly unnerving as she approached my finger, but then she decided to hang out in the open.
Thus, I was able to capture the image at left. It is an uncropped, full 15 megapixel, image of the black widow as she hung upside down in her web.
Best viewed at full size and then scaled to fit your monitor.
She then proceeded to hang out and fix her web. Thus, I ended up with a gallery of action shots, spinnerets and all. I didn’t know that black widows have hairy backs.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
If I give you an account, will you PLEASE enter her in our Macro Bug Photography exhibit (ongoing through the end of the June)? Any of these shots of Ms Widow could easily win the show!
http://www.ebsqart.com/ArtShows/cmd_214_Exhibition_Entries_2_0_T.htm
June 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Whoops, gave you the wrong page link! it’s actually: http://www.ebsqart.com/ArtShows/cmd_214_Exhibition_Entries.htm D’oh!
June 14th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Those pics are nuts! They gave me the exact opposite reaction of your
June 14th, 2009 at 3:15 am
… previous post
June 14th, 2009 at 10:03 am
She really is a thing of beauty. Wonderful photos. Too bad she’s a bad girl.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Grace loves these photos. We hardly ever see black widows here in Austin — but if you ever want a brown recluse, just come visit our garage…
August 15th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
[...] whatever reason, the black widow population in our neighborhood has skyrocketed this [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 5:23 am
I have about 15 mud daubers nesting by the garage, if you want I can ship them to you. I’ve noticed most of my widow population has magically ‘disappeared’