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. You might think she’s ugly… but she has tied a little webbing — on her rear leg to the cement — to remind herself not to leave any time soon… and (though rather emaciated and hungry) she is not moving; so she is a very caring and good mother. That, my friends, is beautiful!
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. (Fishing Spiders get quite large. Some, legs included, can be over 3 inches long. Some can dive underwater to catch prey, or they catch prey near the surface of the water, even minnows. It is unusual for spiders to eat vertebrates, but these do! Females guard their eggs sacs for quite a long time… often over a month, not eating while doing so. The one below was on cement on the bank of a river. It was rather strange about how i came upon it. While at home, i had a premonition that if i went to the river bank… i’d see an unusually nice, large spider there. I grabbed a camera and walked to the river bank; as i approached the bank, the spider could be seen from quite a distance and one realized immediately that that was what the intimation was about. It didn’t budge while i took shots; then i politely left it with its highly precious orb.)
Dolomedes tenebrosus (Fishing Spider) with her egg sac … photo by Thomas Peace 2014
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 