Black wood spider

Nephila kuhlii - black wood spider

When I arrived at the safari site, a blip presented straight away. I set up my camera as quick as possible but alas, the shot was gone. But, my start-up routine was disturbed and I omitted to switch on the lens vibration reduction and didn't notice until the end of the session. Back at the lab, this resulted in a bag of blurry, mixed up pixels.

My planned shot of another argiope, just a sidestep from yesterday's blipped argiope, was one of the images that didn't make the cut unfortunately, but I will get more opportunities, as these spiders never move from the web.

It is good to see a fresh batch of nephila spiders building their huge webs. These giant orb weaver spiders only live for about a year, so after the adults die off, there is a couple of months of nothing, until the spiderlings start to grow to a noticeable size.

I first saw this black bodied nephila end of march last year. I only collected three images and none of them were blippable. I just wasn't interested in this rather boring looking spider surrounded by other colorful spiders. It wasn't until a few months ago when I started getting serious about identifications for my collection, that I began to realize that this spider was a bit special.

Hardly any images of it on the web and a lot of what there is, comes from this region. Certainly no reliable ID's for her, although a few people will attach names with hardly any research at all, as discussed yesterday. So this year I plan to collect a lot more images of this rarity as it grows up into a monster.

Current body length is about 5/4" with a leg radius of about 4", still got a long way to grow. It is simply amazing the body size that nephila achieve in just a short year. Some spiders like tarantulas have been recorded living for 25 years in captivity.

Update - finally found an ID, Nephila kuhlii, black wood spider.

Dave