I mentioned a couple of days ago that spiders seem to be everywhere at the moment. This continues to be true, but none are cuter than a cluster of tiny little babies that I found on my shed. That's a nail head in the corner, to give an idea of scale. Actually I found several clusters, presumably recently hatched. If you prod the bunch with a finger they all scamper apart as if the group has exploded, then they slowly crawl back together again.
These are the babies of the standard Garden spider (Araneus diadematus) which I've blogged about before. Come autumn there will be loads of adults stringing their webs across every part of the garden.
If you look very closely at the picture (click for a higher resolution version) you'll see another even smaller beastie just above the nail head: a black and red thing with two long antennae, facing towards the left. I have no idea what it is (answers in the comments please) but it's amazing how often I notice such things only when examining macro photos on the computer.
Sweet! I can cope with them that size!!
If the current crop of garden spider babies in our garden is anything to go by, we will have a positive Shelob’s lair of webs come autumn..I found a clutter (that’s the collective noun!) of baby spiders perched on the lavender bush just outside our greenhouse today….the only black and red thing with antennae I can think of is a ladybird larvae…..but they are much bigger than a ladybird, and huge compared to those tiny baby spiders….
I wouldn’t have said that ladybird larvae have antenna: http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ladybird+larva&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1474&bih=1090
Looks scary….
Just found cluster of babie spiders on my shed which look the same, pretty they are not but are they dangerous?? I would worry but I have young children who like to play in garden x
They won’t do any harm – they’ll just spin webs and catch flies 🙂
Seriously, they prefer to run away when bothered, but I don’t believe that their bite is problematic anyway. I used to let them chew on my fingers when I was young, but they couldn’t break the skin.