Modest spider

Argiope modesta

Very difficult to find information on these spiders, even though they are quite common. There is a similar spider, argiope appensa, but its range is more Hawaii, they look the same to me.

It irritates me that these bug scientists do all this field work, identify a spider, give it a silly name, classify it in a group, stick a pin in it and store it in a tray in a museum draw and then call it a day. So, what about a goddam photograph! The web (WWW) is loaded with spider names and classification information, but no pictures. What a bunch of pillocks!

It was still dark when I left the house this morning, I was hoping to find a mosquito or sleeping fly on a still leaf, for a stack subject. The leaves were soaking wet from rain in the night and no sign of any flies.

I did find this argiope, St Andrews cross spider which had built its web across the path. It was up too high for the tripod, so I shot a bunch of hand helds. The view was against the now lightening sky and focus was impossible as I could not see anything other than a black shape. I did the best I could and bracket focused, swaying in and out.

Back at the lab, I found four shots that had various bits of good information and I was able to stitch them together to make one good image.

The danger of being the first of the day to walk the path, is that you run the risk of walking into a web. Today it happened, I ended up with a huge long jawed spider across my eye. This was actually a good thing, because at least I knew where it was. I put one hand in front of the spider and chased it onto the hand with my other and then back onto a branch. I then photographed it of course, but preferred the argiope for the blip.

Dave