Zebra Spiders.

Now that the weather has warmed up there are a lot more insects to see and we have been on the lookout for subjects for macro photography. We didn’t, however, realise that today would be a ‘special macro‘ day. It was a beautiful warm spring day and I had just finished cutting the grass and was putting the mower away and Susan was potting - up some runner beans in one of the sheds. Suddenly she shouted ‘Jumping Spider’!! I dropped everything and ran to get a specimen pot to try and capture it. These little spiders have been number one on our wanted list since buying a macro lens. They don’t spin webs they jump onto their prey and are very agile indeed. I managed to manoeuvre the spider into a pot and put it somewhere dark while I got the equipment ready. It’s difficult to get the props and backgrounds right for these small subjects and I realise now that good props are everything. I decided to fill the top of an old margarine tub with building sand and then placed it on top of an egg box so I could look straight at the spider. These spider’s posture can frequently be quite erect and they can be very photogenic when they are in this position. While this was going on Susan found another one and I couldn’t quite believe what was happening we had male and female Zebra spiders!!
We were worried that the spiders would live up to their name and jump away but we needn’t have worried because they were very accommodating and after getting used to the props they happily walked around and even rested on my finger and posed in some classic jumping spider positions.
These really are lovely friendly little spiders and it was a pleasure to photograph them.

Both spiders, as with all our subjects, were unharmed and returned to their natural habitat after a short time.


Male.


Female