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Home > TME Community > Share Your Work > Macro > Spider Breakfast
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Spider Breakfast
Started August 23, 2009 @ 6:08pm by RickT
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| Spider Breakfast | August 23, 2009 @ 6:08pm | I think the title is explicit enough, but as a further notice these pics might be a little raw for the squeamish. And so I will pad out the distance to the first picture with some of my less-than-Hemingwayesque prose.
I have an Araneus gemmoides (Cat-face spider) that has taken up residence on a trellis with a clematis plant. When I checked the web this morning I could see that there had been some action from the unrepaired gaps. Looking at the usual hiding spot under a dead clematis leaf, I found that she was greedily devouring a yellowjacket. Some days I can shoot 100 shots and get 1 usable one. Today, with tripod and flash, it seemed every shot was well-focused and decent. The hardest part was getting a good angle on the action, shooting the underside of the leaf without disturbing the web. When I started shooting, the yellowjacket was obviously a very fresh kill--as I watched it got more and more of that deflated balloon look to it. The method of eating was almost like we might eat corn on the cob, moving back and forth along the length while rotating it every so often. All but 3 legs were put to use for holding and handling this big meal.
Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, ISO 100, f/20, 1/250 w/flash
larger view at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21714994@N00/3850145948/sizes/o/
The head of the yellowjacket is at the top end, with its left eye facing up and out and its mouth parts towards the ventral side of the spider. The next yellowjacket to land on my food will be threatened with being fed to the spider.
Larger image at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21714994@N00/3849350037/sizes/o/
I've added a couple of pointers for those unfamiliar with spider anatomy (and why would you want to be?). The sucking mouth parts of the spider remain hidden during feeding--they are behind the chelicerae. In this angle you can see the left chelicera and the fang at its end. At this point, with the yellowjacket dead, the chelicerae and fangs are used as just other manipulating appendages with the legs and pedipalps.
Larger image at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21714994@N00/3850144896/sizes/o/
Okay, my work here is done. Time to start dinner 
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| BECKY - WARNING!!! | August 24, 2009 @ 8:43am | Yuck! I'd just finished breakfast when I saw these. The images themselves are great - but my tummy could have done without your "less-than-Hemingwayesque prose." Esp the part about eating corn-on-the-cob! I'll never be able to eat corn-on-the-cob again without thinking of how this spider eats her yellow jackets!
Great captures, Rick. And thanks for the back story, anyway 
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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gaelldew
Posts: 294 |
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| August 24, 2009 @ 9:55am | Thats ok by me Flo, I never eat corn on the cob anyway, what a fantastic set Rick, superb focus on them all, " but " will have to google all the latin stuff. lol.
Here in the U.K.
http://gaelldew.zenfolio.com/ |
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| August 24, 2009 @ 1:23pm |
Quote (RickT)
as I watched it got more and more of that deflated balloon look to it. |
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That really puts it into perspective, still we must keep these yellow jackets off the food! 
Great images and very educational RIck thanks for sharing them.
Danny |
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delbrajan
Posts: 469 |
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| Spider Breakfast | August 25, 2009 @ 11:13am | Wow, Rick! Those are incredible! I have a 40D and a 100mm macro lens, and I've never gotten anything as close and detailed as these shots. How close were you?
ATTENTION: All of you who are arachnophobic and/or get queasy reading about the way spiders consume their prey -- There's an unpleasantly graphic description of a spider consuming its prey in the last two lines of this post. Don't read past the next paragraph if you can't handle it.
I've found spiders to be fascinating subjects, and have learned something with each one that I photograph. Last summer, I watched a most unusual-looking spider in my garden as she wove her web every morning and then ate it at sundown. She was so tiny that I couldn't see her details until I looked through my macro lens -- but through the lens she looked like some kind of bizarre alien creature I had never seen before. I identified her as a Spined Micrathena (by looking her up on spiderzrule.com to make sure she wasn't poisonous.) I called her "Spike."
WARNING! WARNING! HERE IT COMES! STOP READING NOW!
As for the corn-on-the-cob reference -- I thought spiders injected their prey with venom (which liquifies their insides) and then sucked the liquified innards out.
Jan
Djan (PPY) |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| August 25, 2009 @ 12:04pm | Flo! Your warning to Becky would have been far too late! She would have already scrolled down past the pics to see it. Hence my truth in advertising at the beginning . The corn-on-the-cob is an in-apt analogy, in that I was only comparing the across-the-rows-and-rotate motion. It would be a real analogy if you were somehow liquefying the cob and sucking it out between the mostly undamaged kernels.
Jan, the fangs only inject poison. After that they are used like little picks to help manipulate, and also to pull more holes in the exoskeleton so that the enzymes from the mouth itself can be "spit" in. Some spiders have small "teeth" between the chelicerae so that they can mash things up a bit like using jaws--this one does not do it that way. Regarding the 100mm Canon macro lens--I love it. I was just about at the maximum closeness, so figure about 9 or 10 inches from the spider. This spider is fairly large, with a body of about 5/8". The resulting picture was then cropped to what you see. I sharpened it within Adobe Camera Raw--for my camera a radius of 1.2 pixels and a sharpening of "50", whatever that value means. I also shot this at f/20, in flagrant disregard of "diffraction". I'll take DOF any day.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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JPetty
Posts: 1,253 |
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| August 25, 2009 @ 9:28pm |
Quote (RickT)
I also shot this at f/20, in flagrant disregard of "diffraction". I'll take DOF any day. |
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AMEN to that Rick. These are simply wonderful macro shots. You did very well with them. The storyline didn't bother me at all. I found it fascinating. You certainly take more time to research your subject than I usually do. I'm content to just say spider and be done with it.
Janet
Go ahead and play with the images. I would ask that when you post them on other sites (such as Flikr, Photobucket, etc.) that you credit my photography. I would do the same for you! Other than that, I'm E Z T D B W. |
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| Spider | August 28, 2009 @ 4:28pm | | Wow, excellent focus with the macro lens. I wish i had as steady a hand. Nice work.. |
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Bill H.
Posts: 325 |
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| August 31, 2009 @ 7:07pm | It's like the Discovery channel, great focus.
Bill H.
PPY
" Do not go where the path might lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| September 1, 2009 @ 9:38am | Bill H. and Cobbweb, thanks for the kind words. I, too, wish I had a steady hand. Since the web is conveniently placed at eye level, I've been using a tripod.
Knowing that web repairs are carried out after dark, I went out last evening hoping to catch some web building in action. But she was being lazy. Despite some holes in the web, she was content to settle in the center and wait for something to drop in for dinner. But that gave me the opportunity to get a full body shot. This spider is sometimes called the "cat-face spider" because of the shape and markings on the abdomen. The face becomes somewhat more visible if you rotate the picture 180 degrees. Then the posterior point of the abdomen becomes the cat's chin, the 2 points at the anterior end of the abdomen are the ears, and the dots are the eyes.
Focusing in the dark was a bit of a problem. I used my headlamp to illuminate the spider while I used the camera's rear display to focus manually. The bright flash when I shot didn't seem to disturb her.
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| September 1, 2009 @ 10:04am | She sure is full of prickles and you captured them beautifully. Thanks for posting more images of this interesting critter.
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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RickT
Posts: 1,694 |
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| Eight are barely enough | September 2, 2009 @ 12:31pm | Eight legs, that is. Between hanging onto the scaffolding strands near the center of the web-under-construction, and pulling new strands from the spinnerets, this spider has its claws full. In this shot there are 2 strands coming from the spinnerets: 1 from the left anterior spinneret and 1 from the right posterior. Since it was dark, I couldn't really tell how the 2 different strands were being deployed.
Yes, I returned to the web last night to see if there would be any building activity and found that the spider was reconstructing her web. I wasn't there for the web-removal stage, so I don't know if she simply cut out the old strands or ate them (either method is used by spiders as a group). When I arrived she was just restoring the radial strands and hadn't gotten to the the spiral strands yet. She had left a dead something or other in the center of the old web, and she frequently paused at the center and seemed to snack on it. She was obviously in no hurry. Since it was 11 p.m., I had an agenda that included getting to bed. I didn't stick around for the next couple of hours to watch the work get completed. At that hour, I can't handle construction being done at the pace of your average road crew.
Canon 40D, lens 100mm macro, f/20, 1/250 with flash, dialed down to underexpose 1 1/2 stops
Larger view at http://www.flickr.com/photos/21714994@N00/3881021493/sizes/o/
RickT
Boulder, Colorado
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwteichler/
PPY |
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Flo
Posts: 15,844 |
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| September 2, 2009 @ 2:06pm | Fascinating, Rick. Thanks for keeping us posted.
Flo - PPY
"May we live in peace without weeping. May our joy outline the lives we touch without ceasing. And may our love fill the world, angel wings beating." aziza
http://photos.tonebytone.com |
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assignment
Community Assignment #53
Picture Window
Due Date: September 16, 2011 |
Have you heard about the Backyard Shots Photography Guide "Street Portraiture with CraigTanner"?
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