Grey House Spider

Badumna longinqua. Comes from Australia, and is one of our most common spiders.

This is the biggest grey house spider I have ever seen. She lives behind my washing machine. I occasionally catch a glimpse of her, but she usually dashes off at speed. This morning, however, it was rather cold and she had crept between the folds of an old towel. When I discovered her I quickly replaced the towel and went for my camera. Fortunately it opened and I wedged on the old magnifying filter. When I lifted the towel she gave me just a few seconds before ambling off to her lair.

Edit 30.06.11: I was able to measure her- she's 2.5 cm from head to tail, and has a legspread of 4 cm.

There was snow low on the foothills this morning, but the mountains were shrouded in cloud until lunchtime. Then I was busy doing other things for a couple of hours, by which time the sun was at the back of the mountains, leaving them mainly in silhouette. I've just looked at the Castle Hill Peak webcam (available during our daylight hours). There is not a lot of snow up there. Rocks and ridges are sticking out.