Greetings fellow Foxies,
For years I have been intrigued by the large webs in summer, often at the base of a bush that contain walls of sand grains. Perhaps insects climb the sandy wall then fall into the silky web below.
The occupant was always hidden despite attempts to entice them out.
Recently I decided to use bait and placed a slater in a web, and it disappeared in a blur of motion. I passed the job to Alan Kerrigan who used more robust bait (a bronze field beetle). He was still impressed by the spider’s speed, but managed to get the following image. Meet Cethegus fugax the sand curtain spider, a trapdoor spider relative. Now this is a spider to be respected, and admired! Oops, arachnophobes reading this will be tossing their monitors out the window, or rushing away to hide under a bed where they are likely to meet a real spider and then have a seizure. Sorry!
Fear not, these spiders will not harm you unless you put a finger down their burrow, and even I’m not that crazy.
For years I have been intrigued by the large webs in summer, often at the base of a bush that contain walls of sand grains. Perhaps insects climb the sandy wall then fall into the silky web below.
The occupant was always hidden despite attempts to entice them out.
Recently I decided to use bait and placed a slater in a web, and it disappeared in a blur of motion. I passed the job to Alan Kerrigan who used more robust bait (a bronze field beetle). He was still impressed by the spider’s speed, but managed to get the following image. Meet Cethegus fugax the sand curtain spider, a trapdoor spider relative. Now this is a spider to be respected, and admired! Oops, arachnophobes reading this will be tossing their monitors out the window, or rushing away to hide under a bed where they are likely to meet a real spider and then have a seizure. Sorry!
Fear not, these spiders will not harm you unless you put a finger down their burrow, and even I’m not that crazy.
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