I mentioned the ubiquity of spiders, and I keep running into them everywhere I go now. Look at this magnificent funnel web made in a cannon wheel at the American Legion hall here in Morris. I tried gently tapping the web to see if I could get the occupant to scurry out and say hello, but no luck.
I feel like I spend half of my days vacuuming up cobwebs. They’re impossible to get rid of. Also, I have no idea how they survive — there are few insects in the house, they never seem to catch anything, and they don’t have any obvious source of water either. But they keep cranking out the gossamer, everywhere. Also, I hardly ever see them.
You probably weren’t tapping correctly. Try to tap in a more distressed-bug-like manner.
I don’t know how to tap like a bug, but sometimes if you throw in a tiny piece of leaf they make a quick check to be sure it wasn’t an insect.
1 acre of hay meadow may contain 2.25 million spiders. Each of these spiders will eat 2 insects a week for 6 months, which works out at about 108 million insects .
Here is a link to the quote above .
http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/meadows/animals.htm
More spiders than you can shake a stick at .
While waiting an hour for an every-ten-minutes-bus this morning, I amused myself watch a bush swarming with wasps and flies sucking up its nectar, and noticed several webs slung hopefully in its branches. The spider occupants were all tucked away in the curl of adjacent leaves.
“Some Pig!”
I’ve been following the activity of an unidentified spider on the wing mirror of my car. She(?) has made a reasonable living from her web, which has proved resistant to 70mph driving. I left my home on Skye for a holiday on the Orkney islands. She made it here but decamped at the weekend. I wonder what she makes of her new environment.
The web looks old and ill kept. The creator is likely dead or elsewhere.
Plus, every (field) biologist knows that the best way to emulate insect vibrations in a web is to put, you know, an actual insect into the web. Yer a biologist fercrissakes! Go get a bug! Like spiders, they’re everyfrikkinwhere! Failing that, get another spider.