The HUGE black and yellow garden spider (Argiope Aurantia), who lived in the corner of my upstairs eve, passed on. She was a wonderful spider (although very scary to look upon). She at moths, aphids, flies and grasshoppers, mosquitoes, sometimes bees and I saw several wasps. (Do NOT try to touch this spider….they will bite!)
As a little side note: male and female black and yellow garden spiders spin their own webs and hunt on their own during the day for most of their lives. Once mature, the males leave his web to hunt for a mate –I never met him, but I’m sure he must have been just wonderful. My spider was a beauty and she had very selective tastes.
Anyway, of course the poor fellow passed on, the job was just way too much for him.
I never named my spider, but she created a huge, large, GIANT web with heavy zigzagging, called ‘stabiliments’ down the center.
Our winter was just too cold for her (I am told in the milder areas of the United States my spider’s relatives can live for years.) and she passed. I saw her poor crumbled body on the roof shingle below her tattered web one day.
I left her eggs to spend the winter in their very dormant state inside their multilayered egg sac. They emerged Sunday…within thirty minutes what once was an spider incubator…was just a blank wall.
Close to where they had incubated an couple of darling barn swallows have taken up residents. More on that later.
Linda
Life on a Colorado Farm 