Stretching out

I couldn't find any signs of fresh dragonfly emergences this morning, despite the perfect weather conditions.  I suspect that we've probably now had just about all of those that were coming out this year.  After yesterday's dragon macro, which many of you enjoyed (thank you very much) I've chosen a spider for today, with apologies to those that can't bear to look at spiders.

I might have tried to get down to one of the reserves on the Somerset Levels but it is rather warm just at the moment and I didn't fancy the effort it would entail in the heat.  Laziness on my part.  So a spider it is ...

This particular web building spider seems to live in the vegetation surrounding the pond.  I'm not absolutely sure about it, but suspect that it is a Tetragnatha extensa (stretch spider).  They apparently adopt a straight line defensive posture when alarmed - for example when a Blipper gets too close to it with a macro lens. 

Stretch spiders  live on low vegetation in damp areas (i.e. our pond is perfect), and feed on flying insects which they catch in their web.  When I went to look up the spider's details, there was a "lovely" photograph of one eating a common darter (the small dragonfly species that has featured a fair bit here in recent days).  

Needless to say I'm not terribly happy about that, but to date its not managed to catch any of our dragons.