For fifteen years I’ve been scrutinizing the foliage in my search for spiders to photograph. Up until two weeks ago I’d never seen anything remotely like this massive communal web with dozens of Mecynogea lemniscata. Since then I’ve returned to it daily, and have been thrilled to observe the mating pairs and the proliferation of egg sacs. I’ve gotten good shots of the beautiful, distinctive dome webs and their occupants, but I’ve been frustrated in my attempts to convey the extent of the entire colony. Getting a single shot of it is impossible, so I’ve been working on different approaches to shooting a video. Given the constraints of my iPhone and the five-month-old child strapped to my torso, I’ve not been able to get one that was worth sharing until today. I needed to get the phone ten or fifteen feet up to the top of the branches where most of the egg sacs are, so I improvised the sophisticated equipment you see here: a broom handle, a metal rod and some duct tape. I hope to get a better video after more practice, but for now, here’s a halfway decent view of this amazing colony I’ve been observing. It may be difficult to make out, but trust me: I counted at least twenty broods, many with two or three sacs.
