The spiders are appearing more and more now that the weather is warming. I think this is a Golden Orb Weaver. I've read research that was done at Archibald Biological Station in South Florida that suggests the fancy white designs in spider webs are to keep damage from birds and larger animals to a minimum.
This was a wolf spider carrying an egg case Ethan found while checking the fence lines and moving the cows.
The cup-and-saucer webs are stunning when all hung with dew. This one liked the coral honeysuckle on the garden fence to build a web, but they are also seen along the grass on the ground.
The banana spiders are also getting started. Ethan was hoping to photograph it regularly so we could watch it grow. They get enormous. It's amazing to see how large and high they spin their webs, often stretched between two tall trees. We often try to figure out how they manage it without wings.
This was a Black Widow that was living in the dug-out gopher tortoise burrow on the way to the pastures. It was laying eggs in the most interesting way. It had made an egg case and was stabbing it's ovapositer into the egg case again and again, laying eggs inside.
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