Christmas spider

Austracantha minax

Also called a jewel spider. I have blipped these lovely little spiders before (about this time last year), but not since then. I can't find any in my garden, but my parents seem to have a very active breeding colony around their vegetable beds: I found five today, all female. One had small ones in it's web, which I thought must be spiderlings, but looking closer, I think they were a couple of males, who are half the size of the females and a duller brown colour.

This is the only spider in the Austracantha genus found only in Australia.

I used the flash for this image, which I very rarely do. In fact, the flash, being removable, is hardly ever on my camera. But it was a very dull, grey day (very humid too), so I thought I'd try it, rather than upping the ISO too high. Until recently, I didn't know you could change the strength of the flash, so now I keep it set at less than full strength, because I'm not a fan of flash for macro generally – really destroys the depth in an image and makes it all look too glarey and shiny. Natural sunlight is so much better, but there was none!