Protected by Mom - _TNY_5082
The nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis), hunts their prey on the move rather than making a web to trap it in.
Instead, they have gotten the name because of the females habit of building a nursery web where they protect their egg sac and later the hatched spiderlings for the first part of their life. This female was pretty adamant about not leaving her web in spite of me getting close.
This behaviour is not unique to the species, but shared by all members of the Pisauridae family.
An shot of a very similar P. mirabilis (possibly the same one) carrying around the egg-sac, taken a week-and-a-half earlier twenty meters from this can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/41347000850/
Protected by Mom - _TNY_5082
The nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis), hunts their prey on the move rather than making a web to trap it in.
Instead, they have gotten the name because of the females habit of building a nursery web where they protect their egg sac and later the hatched spiderlings for the first part of their life. This female was pretty adamant about not leaving her web in spite of me getting close.
This behaviour is not unique to the species, but shared by all members of the Pisauridae family.
An shot of a very similar P. mirabilis (possibly the same one) carrying around the egg-sac, taken a week-and-a-half earlier twenty meters from this can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/41347000850/