Thursday, August 31, 2006

A mini spider and a short-palped cranefly



Today I found a pale,flaccid, freshly emerged short-palped cranefly, probably Limonia chorea, resting on the soil surface to harden its wings and exoskeleton generally before taking wing. Within minutes it had flown.

Nearby, between two leaves of a rush plant, a minute spider had spun a delicate orb web. (View the picture at full size for the detail)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that the short-palped cranefly I see in the jaws of the spider?

Patrick Roper said...

No, it wasn't the short-palped cranefly - much too large for that little spider. I did try to work out what it was, but there wasn't enough left.