Along Came A Spider...

We were sitting on our tuffets on the front porch a few days ago admiring the huge circular web created by the Western Spotted Orb Weaver across our driveway, when the spider apparently decided to check on the security of her stabilizing threads.

...And Sat Down Beside Her

She crawled down the web and sat down on the fence railing beside me.

Spots Are Visible From This Angle

Actually, she wasn't resting, she was pretty busy the whole time checking on the webbing.  She even dropped down to the floor and either added some more webbing to the base structure, or else she gobbled up some of the chiggers or mites or whatever has been biting me on the ankles recently; it's hard to tell with spiders.

View From Another Angle

We've been calling the spider "she"; apparently both the females and the males of this species look much the same with the females being the larger of the two, about 11-17mm.  Since this spider was fairly large, we concluded that it was probably female.

I've always been fascinated by the engineering required to construct an Orb Weaver's web.  Because they construct most of the the webbing at night, I've never seen one actually construct it.  This spider's webbing stretches from the neighbor's tall Pyracantha bush on the other side of our driveway all the way across the driveway to our porch fence railing.  I still don't know how they get webbing across such a distance; this web was already constructed before we noticed it at all.

Hello, There!

They are fascinating animals, and she's welcome to all the mites, chiggers and black flies she can eat.