Writing Spider/Garden Spider (added new pic farther down)

We LOVE those! We had a few at our first house, but haven't had any in years. They are so cool! (As long as they are on their webs, 'cause I don't like spiders!)

I think these are the coolest! We used to have more of them here on the farm but not so many lately. They are beautiful and get so big near the summer's end. As long as they are outside and not on me, I like them a lot. They are of the genus Argiope. Thanks for sharing.

I forgot to mention the best part about these guys - they are the reason I came around to liking spiders, though some of you know I am an entomologist (spiders are separate though and plenty of us don't really dig them):

They provide maternal care to their young. Once their babies hatch, mom will hunt instead of waiting for prey to come to her web, and she'll bring back katydids or other good sized meals for the babies. I just about fell out from the cuteness of those tiny spiderlings, and I pretty much tolerate most spiders since. As kellybelly mentions, great pest control!

ETA scraplette, I didn't know that about leopard geckos! That's neat. I bet it tastes pretty ick.

Love this spider.
When I was a child, we would gently shake a corner of the web, and then the spider would stay in the middle of the web, but make the large web pulse. It is fun to watch. I guess the moving web would catch more insects.

Thank you for sharing your picture and thanks to those of you sharing your cool spider info.

J

Beautiful.

I've never seen a spider that looked like this. What states are they found in? And it also looks to be quite big. In relation to a quarter, is it bigger? Smaller?

I admit to having mixed feelings about spiders. I think their webs are beautiful and I have photographed many. I like to zoom in and look at both the spider and the web closely without risking it jumping on me. I don't know if spiders do launch themselves at something as large as a person, but a friend teased me with that once and it stuck in my fear banks. I was able to put it aside to allow my son to keep a pet tarantula when he was little. It wasn't easy, but I didn't want to pass my fears on to him. As long as they are behind glass, like at an exhibit, I am okay.

This one is quite beautiful and has such colorful markings. We don't have anything like this in SoCal. The largest spider in this area, that I know of, is a tarantula, and the only one I can think of with any color is the black widow. There are a lot of those in my yard.

I hate spiders, but find the garden spiders kind of cool. As long as they are outside.

A few years ago we had one of these on our back deck. This is the ONLY spider I felt compelled to watch in stead of SMASH.

The one we had was REALLY big. Her body was about the size of a quarter! My girls found a few crickets in the yard and tossed them at the web. She made really quick work of catching and wrapping each one in silk for a meal later. We watched her for a couple of days and then she was gone. It was cool. Thx for sharing.

Some people call them banana spiders, because of the yellow on the body. We called them writing spiders because of the "writing" in the center of the web.

One year we had one right outside our patio door. The web was just taller than I am ( 5 ft.). It caught a walking stick insect in the web one night. The two fell out of the web on the floor right outside our door. We watched them roll and tumble and fight for awhile, until they rolled into the area under the bushes and it was too dark to see them. The next morning both were damaged--missing a leg. We assume it was the same spider. It was over in our garden, about 20 ft. away.