A Field Guide to the North Side of Old Mill Hill, Atlantic Mine, MI
Archive for the ‘Cobweb spiders’ Category.
This is a species of spider that has successfully colonized the dark corners of our house: so far S_ found me three specimens to photograph in December and January (two females and a male). I could tell that one of them was male because he had enormously swollen pedipalps, which I understand means he was ready to mate. He was within a few inches of one of the females, so we suspect that he was courting her when he was caught.
The spider below had made a minimalist mesh-style web on the frame of our back door, so I took a bunch of pictures in-place with the improvised macro lens. By bracing against the surface of the door and taking lots of pictures, I managed to get a few that showed decent detail, but it was a lot of effort. Keep in mind that this is a little guy, only about 5 millimeters long. If there had not been a surface to brace against, there is no way I could have held the camera still enough to get an unblurred photograph.
But, not to worry! We have so much forgotten junk in the lab, there must be something that can be used to hold a camera steady, right?
Right! I would like you to meet “The Beast”, about 10 pounds of the finest brass machining the 19th century had to offer![1]
I found this old microscope frame stuck away in the back of a cabinet, along with a bunch of other microscope parts that were probably scrapped out sometime before I was born. This one was obviously the stage and mount for a dissecting scope, the mount is a nice 3-dimension positioner, moving up/down/forward/back/left/right with several inches of travel in each direction. With a bit of adaptation (mainly just getting a 1/4-20 capscrew to mount the camera, and drilling one hole so that the screw would fit), the camera and macro lens mounted up just fine.