Woah man! Garden spider! HUGE!

[neanderpaul]

Lol Larry!!! :lol: that cicada is huge too! It's the largest species of cicada that I've seen for real. My face huh? Hmmm. If I post pics of that I think genevadirt will have a heart attack! Lol!

[graywolf_14]

Yea first time seeing a black widow was at basic training and I killed everyone of them I seen... ERR makes my skin crawl, the worste is killing one right before you go to sleep so then your laying in bed thinking about them crawling all over you...

[neanderpaul]

Did someone say black widow? I shot these a few years ago.

[GenevaDirt]

:eeeeeek: :nono: thats enough Paul!

[neanderpaul]

:lol:

[Safety Guy]

Hey Willie!











Do you feel something crawling on your shoulder?



Karl

[walth]

there was a decent size female black widow hiding under the exhaust manifold to the B6 I carried. Then when I got to working on the festy I found a dead one down by the hard lines (fuel / brake) but I didn't know if there were more...

so I need some specs...your camera for 150 bucks...takes. amazing. pictures.!!! Those shots of the argiope are very nice!

I am "cautious" with spiders but in the last 6 months or so I've become quite fascinated with them. I'm constantly looking for them and trying to identify what is what. There are supposedly 40k species and more counting! crazy! And when I see them outside during auto work or whatever and they're in the way I'll move them 95% of the time.

When I was a kid I would go outside and let those big argiope spiders crawl all over my hands and arms. lol crazy

[neanderpaul]

It is a fuji finepix.
Fujifilm Finepix S1000fd 10MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Zoom
I love it! Perfect for everything and killer for wildlife with it's amazing optical zoom and super macro. Because it was new 3 years ago it's usually $150 used on eBay. It was $450 new 3 years ago. So barely more than a new point and shoot.

I do love the spiders too. I very rarely kill them.

[walth]

that's how it was when I got my easyshare dx7630 back in 06. picked it up used on ebay for like 100 bucks shipped and got a 2gb card for 18 (which they were hard to get that cheap back then!!!)

I recall the dx's being 400+ when new in 04 but I'm not positive because it's only 6.1MP and idk the zoom. I like my camera a lot but...like yours has the hairs of the spiders legs! I have never gotten that out of my digital. sweet. I'll do some reading on these next week.

[JPT]

We have these everywhere at work. They're about the size of the end of your thumb.





They build huge webs between the cars overnight. Each morning when we go out to "key the lot" (put keys to all the cars in the doors), we have to run a gauntlet of these things.

Sorry but that thing would have been TORCHED!!! I don't care how good they are said to be Karl......If it stays away from anywhere I am...it can live. But if it is near me....it WILL BE DEAD!

As far as seeing...they can see just fine. Had one stalking me from across a room once....it did not survive (after I screamed and cried).

Geneva, you would love it here. Sometimes when we take cars out, we have "passengers" riding with us.

[walth]

as far as I know, these are absolutley harmless. Don't get me wrong, they look awful!! Those are garden orb weavers. I also like funnel weavers, micrathena, argiope. I'm trying to get to where I can identify which weavers are bad enough not to mess with.

with the garden orb weavers, I was having a blast running around the house catching crickets and feeding 2-3 of these guys the other night!! lol

[JPT]

They seem harmless. As soon as they know you're near, they take off running as fast as they can. Don't know if I'd try catching one though.



They are creepy looking. Especially when running up your arm.

[neanderpaul]

Feeding them is a blast!

[zoom zoom]

Whats this little guy? I see thousands of these.. i figure its a wolf spider or something..

http://i53.tinypic.com/ea5stg.jpg

I watched this one catch and kill a moth, then he wrapped the moths head and dangled it from his butt while the guy above started to move in on his kill..

http://i55.tinypic.com/33jtmkg.jpg

http://i53.tinypic.com/o0c8r7.jpg

Didn't bother to stick around and see who won, i hate spiders..

[walth]

they look like garden weavers to me, harmless. but they're kind of fuzzy pics. a couple of tips for spotting them, wide bodies, they like to go up a bit above their web and then turn around and stare down at the web. pretty good tactics.

idk what kind of settings you have but if you zoom in far enough and then take the pic it will focus on majority of what's closest instead of like in your shots there where it sees 70% wall and 30% spider. I had an issue with my easyshare til I figured out rough distance to be from the object and to zoom as much as possible on close up shots and I've gotten some good ones!!

which reminds me, we were at nate's the other day and I got to see a red back female. she was large and very pretty. I'd never seen them without a solid line up the back. this one had like 3 red spots on the back.

I didn't see any of the humongo previous funnel weavers (grass spiders) at his place sadly...oh well