More angst for arachnophobes

Although Ruan Pool is pretty well dry, some of the our other pools look suitable enough for waders, yet they're in distinctly short supply so far this autumn. Stithians Reservoir is having a sandpiper-fest, so I can only presume that Simon, the warden up there, is playing dirty and has set up some kind of feeding station for waders. Well Simon, we have a secret weapon that will be kicking in soon and I am strongly tipping Windmill to turn up an American or two before September is out.

So this morning our thoughts turned to butterflies, dragonflies, moths - and spiders again, especially as the overnight mist had left thousands of webs glistening in the sunshine. We found a number of large orb webs very similar to that spun by our resident Wasp Spider (see posts below), but the inhabitants, although quite large and colourful, didn't have quite the same impact as the stunningly scary Argiope bruennichi.

We took a number of photos and were later able to i.d. them as two common species of Araneus, namely quadratus (above) and diadematus (below). Thanks to Dougy Wright for the top left and bottom right photos and supplying his shorts for the backdrop to that at top right.