We are at the beginning of a three week trip to Extremadura and Andalusia, mixing birding with Moorish architecture and Roman ruins and anything else we find of interest. So I will probably be rather quiet where posts are concerned.
In the meantime, as I don’t have hundreds of photos to go through as we are just en route at the moment, I thought I’d do a quick post from my iPad showing you the egg sacs I found. I had been hoping to find some, but I hadn’t looked up what they look like, which helps. I was amazed - they are a real work of art. A Greek urn, is how I’ve seen them described. And they are big! I think the description of hen egg size might be a bit misleading but they are certainly a good 2cm - 2.5cms.
It took a while to find one, but after the first I found three more. They make them close to where their webs are. Not necessarily on vegetation either, as my friend Andrea in Germany also had a Wasp Spider in her garden. However when she finally found the egg sac, it was actually attached to the wall behind the shrub where the web had been. And - biggest surprise of all - there were two egg sacs! Now I hadn’t read that they can make two egg sacs, but I did then wonder about my ‘big girl’, who had disappeared for a few days earlier on, then came back with a fresh web looking a bit slimmer. And then it happened again. So after she was gone for good, I had another look through the Valerian, and sure enough, there was a second egg sac!
I will be having a good look through the ditch when we get home, as sadly all the spiders had gone by early October. I miss them!
