Foxes Lair
  • Home
  • About
    • About Foxes Lair
    • History
    • Landscape and Soils
  • Things To Do
    • Picnic Spots
    • Walk Trails
    • Visit the Arboretum
    • Ride Your Bicycle
    • Scavenger hunt
    • Geocaching and Orienteering
  • Things To See
    • Wildflowers
    • Trees in the Narrogin district
    • Birds
    • Vertebrates
    • Narrogin spiders scorpions ticks
    • Fungi and lichens
  • Foxes Lair seasonal guide
    • December to March
    • April - May
    • June-July
    • August
    • September
    • October
    • November
  • Other great reserves
    • Railway Dam
    • Yilliminning Rock
    • Old Mill Dam
    • Yornaning Dam
    • Contine Hill
    • Highbury Reserve
    • Boyagin Rock
    • Barna Mia
    • Toolibin Lake
    • Newman Block
    • Harrismith Nature Reserve
    • Candy Block
    • Tutanning Nature Reserve
  • 1Foxypress
    • Foxypress
    • Vanishing Farms
  • Contact

Narrogin Jumping spiders

29/3/2022

1 Comment

 
Greetings fellow Foxies
Jumping spiders (family Salticidae) are miniature warriors of the spider world. They have the most species of the spider families and are very common, but are seldom noticed because they are so tiny. 
Jumping spiders are tiny day-active hunters that will tackle prey several times their size. They are the most intelligent and endearing of spiders, which will stand their ground and rear up when disturbed. Jumping spiders have outstanding eyesight.. The large, centre pair of eyes faces straight forward, giving the spider excellent resolution, and they have good color vision. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Jumping spiders make silk, but they don’t make trap webs, preferring to spot their prey from afar and leap on it (they can cover 50 times their body length in a single leap).  Since they are not tied to a single location by a web, they spend a lot of time on foot (they can remember visual landmarks and relocate their nests) or head-down, near the top of a plant, like a sailor in a crow’s nest. Whether they spot their prey from a perch or find it during a walk, they can spin a dragline when they jump. 
Narrogin species are generally tiny and drab, but make up for this with their interesting behaviour. Myrmarachne species are ant mimics/ant hunters. They tend to wave their front legs in the air to simulate antennae, and many have bodies that also closely resemble ants.

Picture
Picture
Picture

​​Jumping spiders generally rest and produce their eggs in a small webbed sac in the leaf litter and under bark. In some species the male matures faster than the female and at maturity searches for a prepubescent female.  After finding one he builds her a shelter web and guards her other males until she is ready to mate.
Picture
Very gravid (pregnant) female at edge of shelter web
Each autumn I see Euryattus species spindle shaped egg sacs on rock sheoak needles. The female apparently guards the egg web for a month until the spiderlings hatch, then dies. last year I watched a female patiently  sitting on or adjacent tto her egg. Unfortunately she disappeared after three weeks after heavy rain and I never saw any spiderlings.
Picture
Picture
Picture
This video shows her waggling her cute little bum as she renovates her egg web
1 Comment

Two-tailed Spiders

19/2/2021

0 Comments

 
Picturecloseup showing eyes and twin spinnerets
Greetings fellow Foxies,
While photographing blobs of gum exuding from a manna wattle trunk, I saw an amazingly well-camouflaged little spider within 15cm of my eye. I initially thought that it was a small false wolf spider, but the two long spinnerets indicate a two-tailed spider (Family Hersiliidae genus Tamopsis).
These little spiders are quite common on tree trunks in Eastern Australia, but I have never seen one before, and find few records of them in WA.
Two-tailed Spiders are day and night ambush hunters. The spider waits for the prey on a rock or tree trunk. When there is a small insect within range, the spider will face backwards to the insect, then moving side-way like a crab, runs around and around it, enmeshing the insect with thick silk released from its long spinnerets.
When the silk tightens, the spider turns around, bites an opening through the silk and starts feeding.
Two-tailed spiders are absolute masters of disguise that can change colour and pattern to match their surroundings. Their egg sacs are tiny silken balls of eggs like the ones below.
Check out amazing images by Farhan Bokhari (Myrmician)

Picture
Tamopsis with captured ant
Picture
Possibly Tamopsis egg sacs
0 Comments

Lace-web Spiders

15/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture

There are a couple of common and interesting lace web spiders in Narrogin. The name comes from the lacy nature of their very sticky webs.

The Black House Spider Badumna insignis has a funnel-type web in every home and on many cars (I have one in both of my external rear vision mirrors). In the bush they are more difficult to find. Lookin hollow logs and in holes and crevices.
The adult looks nasty but is really a wimp. They are very reclusive spiders, which  are regularly eaten by birds and White-tailed Spiders.
The one on the left is about to feast on a donated cockroach, but only after I hid from it.

In contrast, the Foliage webbing Spider (Foliage Web Spider, Social Webbing spider) Phryganoporus candidus is inconspicuous, but builds an amazing communal web in summer to rear her young.
In late summer a young female establishes the web, which is enlarged by her and her spiderlings that may number in the hundreds. The web contains a central living area of interconnecting tunnels surrounded by a communal catching web. It becomes a small city containing the spiders, their parasites, and other beasties that feed on the debris. 
Picture
females in the communal web
Picture
Early stage communal web
Picture
Mature web with spiderlings
PictureSingle retreat with fly being drawn into it for supper
​In late spring, sub-adult females leave the nest followed later by the males. These spiders then establish solitary webs, and will eat any intruders, with the temporary exception of males for mating.

Until this autumn, I wondered where these solitary webs were.
​
If you look closely on sheoak needles, you may see a miserable little web, which ends in a narrow conical retreat of silk and insect remains
​
It took me a long time to coax one out with tasty flies and moths. They are small (about 5mm) spiders, which are covered with white hairs to help them cope with hot dry weather.

0 Comments

Bird dropping Spider

25/2/2017

0 Comments

 
On the Banksia Trail I recently noticed a group of weird egg sacs on a twig with a line of silk that led to a strange lump. Unfortunately the bit with the lump broke off during examination. As the lump remains solid despite the process I suspected that it was a zombie spider,which had been killed by a fungus and took it home for examination. 
It was in fact, a very live but atypical  Bird–dropping Spider Celaenia dubia.
This spider is a master of disguise, which hides all day and hunts at night without a web.
At night it suspends itself on a web strand with its claws outstretched and emits a female moth pheromone. Male moths drawn to the scent are grabbed and consumed. Here is a female spider guarding her egg sac 
Picture
Female guarding her eggs
Picture
Brown ball-like egg
As each egg sac contains up to 200 eggs there were over 1000 potential spiderlings.
Check out the bent legs that enable the spider to keep them tightly against its body and the beak-like projection on the front of its carapace (top of front half) containing the slightly raised central four eyes (typical of the Orb weaver family in which it belongs) that enables it to see out when hunched up. They are no danger to humans.
Picture
Long front legs for grabbing moths
Picture
Lumpy mottled abdomen
Picture
Legs adapted for folding up camouflage
Picture
More information
0 Comments

The truth about white-tail spiders

22/1/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureBite with surrounding skin reddening
Greetings fellow Foxies,

White-tail spiders (Lampona species) are greatly feared with many believing that their bites can cause nasty suppurating (word of the week) and necrotic ulcers. Yesterday I was told that this is caused by venom of daddy longlegs that the white-tails eat.
As most white-tail bites occur in summer/autumn inside the house and in the evening, now is a good time to set the record straight.
A great study of 190 bites that were identified as being caused by white-tails makes interesting reading. In brief there were no necrotic ulcers, and conclusions were:
Conclusions: Bites by Lampona spp. cause minor effects in most cases, or a persistent painful red lesion in almost half the cases. White-tail spider bites are very unlikely to cause necrotic ulcers, and other diagnoses must be sought.
The image on the left is typical of bites that a certain daughter regularly receives on body parts. She is yet to die or develop ulcers, despite cries to the contrary.
The vast majority of white-tail bites are caused when the spider is trapped between bedsheets/ towels, and clothes and the body.
So if you want to be bitten regularly, be like said daughter and sleep on a mattress on the floor near an external entrance, don’t make your bed, and leave clothes/towels etc on the floor. Having said that, I do a fair bit of those activities and am rarely affected.
We have had 2 white tails in our lounge in the last 2 weeks so they are common in summer, but so are other spiders. There are more spiders that hunt without using webs than do, and male spiders travel around at night looking for a female.
I put a glass over them with a sheet of paper underneath and turf them all outside.



Don’t waste money spraying your house to control spiders. The chemicals are not residual, spiders have an amazing ability to breed, and there are lots outside just waiting to recolonise the house.
There are many species of white-tail spiders in Australia but the most common one in WA is Lampona cylindrata. White-tails are common but rarely seen outside the home because they hunt at night and generally hide under bark etc. during the day. Bite risk in the bush is almost nil unless you choose to sleep there.
White-tails construct a sac-like web to hide in, and females also construct a flat circular egg sac that they guard until the young emerge
White-tail spiders hunt other spiders. My spider-friendly outdoor dunny enables me to study them on a daily basis. One day I saw a white-tail deliberately leap into another spider’s web and then eat it when the poor occupant came to claim its prize.
A few days ago I was inspecting a dinky little wall spider in its web, but the next day there found a white-tail with sucked- out dinky spider body.
I have friends who revel in spider hating, but overall they (spiders) are great world citizens that deserve admiration.

Picture
Lampona cylindrata guarding her egg sac
Picture
Dinky little wall spider
Picture
Unknown white-tail with wall spider shell
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Doug Sawkins is a friend of Foxes Lair 

    Categories

    All
    Animals Other
    Birds
    Disorders Plant Animal
    Fungi Lichens
    History
    Insects Bugs Other Arthropods
    Landscapes Soils
    Other Reserves And Places
    Reptiles
    Spiders Other Arachnids
    Tree
    Walks Other Facilities
    Wasp
    Wildflowers Orchids
    Wildflowers Other Summer Autumn
    Wildflowers Other Winter Spring
    Wildflowers Parasitic

    Archives

    September 2025
    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    May 2012
    March 2012
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    April 2011

© 2015 All Rights Reserved. Doug Sawkins, Australia.