Southern Marsh Orchids

Southern Marsh Orchids

Sunday 16 February 2014

Hmmm?

Late this afternoon, near Mountain Ash, while searching Broom for moth mines I came across this little beauty. I've looked through my spider book, but can't come up with even a genus. It seems to me that just about every spider known to man needs microscopic examination in order to identify it to species level, but I can rarely even manage genus, so over to you, Adam. Genus will do.



Also, while out enjoying the sunshine today, I took a close look at the lower branches of a Wych Elm, near Aberdare, which has White-letter Hairstreak butterflies and found this WLH egg; the first I've ever found.

White-letter Hairstreak egg

3 comments:

  1. Well done with the WLH egg Mark, and super photo. I've looked on a few Wych Elms in Cardiff this winter and failed to find them, on trees where I found some a few years ago.

    George

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  2. There's a fighting chance the spider is one of the Araneidae, based on the 'straight' alignment of the posterior eyes, and the general look of it. So you have a possible Family, but no chance of getting it to genus from the photo unfortunately. One of the clever chaps on here: http://srs.britishspiders.org.uk/portal.php/p/forum might well be able to do better. Definately needs to go under a microscope! Handsome little thing though!


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  3. Thanks Adam. It looked blissfully happy sitting there on its broom stem, so I think I'll leave it where it is.

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