Earlier this month I found and photographed this spider in my grandmother’s backyard. I finally got around to trying to figure out what it was today by searching obsessively through web page after web page. Well, I think I mostly figured it out, narrowing it down to its family, the Agelenidae, more commonly referred to as Grass Spiders, House Spiders or Funnel Web Weavers (no relation to the poisonous ones in Australia).
There are over 400 North American species in the family and I’m certainly not going to try to figure out which one it is. But if you know, please feel free to let the rest of us know in the comments (also let us know if I managed to get the family wrong!). If not, enjoy the pics!
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
Have you checked BugGuide? Here’s one like yours, Agelenopsis. A male; yours would be, too, because he has the same enlarged “mittens”.
I cant wait to put one of these under sean’s pillow. he’ll squeal like ned flanders!
@Susannah: Thanks for the link…they do look alike.
@Steph: If you do, take video of it and put it on Youtube…
hahahah he’ll kill me if i did that. he would probably record me snoring and blast it everywhere to get even. =P
Have you ever seen those Australian funnel web spiders? Yikes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atrax_robustus.jpg
hey I was out in the woods today just outside of victoria bc and I saw this huge spider it was black with white strips on its legs and I was wondering what kind of spider it is it was big hope u can tell me thank you
i had one of these in a dance costume