Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:07:03 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Arlene Ripley Subject: Re: spider info requested In-Reply-To: <25.40d5203a.2ce8f32d@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Hi Rick, I recently came across a spider like that and thought it was worthy of a photo. It's my Photo of the Week this week . Is this what you saw? It looks like some kind of orb weaver but one of that exact coloration is not in my sole field guide to Insects and Spiders (Audubon Society). So I'd also be interested if anyone knows exactly what it is. Arlene Ripley Calvert County, MD piwa@earthlink.net http://nestbox.com At 10:35 AM 11/16/2003, Rick Sussman wrote: >..........On my way out, as I was getting in my van, I spied something >bright orange on the ground right near the van. I was already sitting >in the driver's seat, and my van is fairly high off the ground, so >whatever it was really caught my eye. It was the color of an orange >highway cone, really bright. I got back out and took a closer look, and >found it was a spider. Rather large (perhaps 1.5-2 centimeters), but >lethargic because it was still cold out. I picked it up on the end of a >stick and gave it closer examination. I have never seen any spider >like it. It legs were also orange, but sort of banded with brown, and its >abdomen was large and odd shaped, with very bright markings of orange and >brownish-white. Its legs were rather "hairy", but because it held them in >close to >its body due to the cold, I couldn't really judge its size, but it was rather >large. It might have been some sort of crab spider, but I'm not certain, and I >only have limited spider resources in my library. Any help IDing it would be >appreciated. > I thought of taking it home to try an ID it here, but I didn't want to >remove it from its "home" territory, so I left it on a small weed in the >parking >lot, very near where I found it. This was my best sighting of the day! ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================