ERRATUM

 ERRATUM

Oh dear. I made an error in this most recent newsletter, AUTUMN 2022. 

The photograph I presented (above) was actually taken during an experience I had just three days before the one I expressed in the article on Baboon spiders, Harpactira tigrina. On this occasion, the previous Saturday, I was walking with the Beaumonts, from Coch-Y-Bunddhu (unit 1) and others when one of the group displaced a stone on the pathway. I noticed this Baboon spider resting restlessly, where the stone used to be, beneath the hammock-type web I explained in the article. That's when I managed to maneuvre it onto my hand for the photograph. This individual, darker in colour and with a more patterned carapace, is probably a male, like the other one, that had secured a refuge between forays in search of a female. Or it could be a female whose burrow had been damaged. 

Whatever. The photograph below is of the spider, lighter in colour and with sparser markings, I was referring to in my blog. I stumbled across it while working on the Rock Kestrel trail on the Tuesday after the previous sighting.... Got mixed up there.... In ten years I have only seen two Baboon spiders here on the estate (although the one in the burrow I know of, I have seen often - even her spiderlings) and suddenly I see two within a week!

I do remember how this one ran over the grass with ease, using its long legs to distribute its body weight like a longclaw would do. Beautiful specimens and I am very fortunate to have bumped into two of them in such close succession.