European House Spider, Cluster Fly
Come in to my parlor
said the spider
to the fly
This is much better. The built-in macro mode on the Canon Powershot A95 seems to work quite well, and actually having some optical zoom means that I don’t have to get so close that the camera shades the arthropod I’m trying to photograph. The fly is still not exactly a thing of beauty, but it is certainly much sharper than the one I took on the window with the other camera.
Anyway, the fly is obviously a fly, hard to say what species exactly because all the members of the family Muscidae look pretty similar. I don’t think it is Musca domestica, at any rate, it doesn’t have the right pattern of body striping and the wings overlap too much. Whatever species this is, it’s the one that gets into our woodwork every winter and hibernates in great numbers, and get all over the house whenever we get a warm spell. It is most likely a cluster fly, genus Pollenia, I doubt it can be narrowed down much more than that without a microscope and maybe some dissection. The flies in our house fit all the descriptions of cluster flies I can find, though: slow-moving, drawn to the sunny windows, hibernate in houses in great numbers, wings overlap significantly when at rest, and no really distinctive color or striping patterns. Their maggots parasitize earthworms, and the adults are harmless but annoying.
I’m pretty sure the spider is a juvenile European House Spider, Tegenaria domestica. We have a lot of these, this one was hiding under a tool box in the basement. Like a lot of people, I used to call these “wolf spiders”, but wolf spiders are actually outdoor-living spiders with relatively large eyes that are rarely found in houses. An observant person will note that this particular spider only appears to have seven legs. That’s because it’s eighth leg evidently fell off when I moved the toolbox.
Fragile little guys, aren’t they?
Leave a comment