A Nigma

It rained for most of the day, and I used the time when I'd otherwise most probably have been out and about to catch up on some of the backlog of photo processing, bug recording, and general admin that has built up over the past couple of weeks, while I've been gadding around enjoying the Indian summer. By 2pm, when I was almost at screaming pitch with boredom, the rain stopped for a while, and I grabbed the macro and squelched off down the garden.

Most of today's subjects were sensibly sheltering under leaves, requiring  me to turn the leaf over with one hand and operate the camera with the other. But Nigma walckenaeri, otherwise known as the wet ice green spider or green mesh web spider, uses the natural curl of a leaf to create her trap, so she was working on the wet upper surface of this red cherry plum leaf, where she stood out beautifully and offered a very straightforward photo opportunity. These tiny spiders, which are only about 5mm long, are generally shy, and their colouring camouflages them so well against green leaves that they're hard even to see, let alone photograph, so the colour contrast in this scene was a gift to both me and the camera.

There's a photo of a completed N. walckenaeri web here, along with some information about the species. I find so many of them in my garden that I tend to assume everyone else does too, but the records I post to iRecord are still autoflagged by the NBN Record Cleaner as being outside the known range of the species, so it may as yet be under-recorded. 

One of my desk tasks today was to process, sort and cull all the photos I took at Croome yesterday, and submit my sightings for the County Recorder to validate. I've posted a few of my favourites on my Facebook page, if you'd care to see them.