While some of the architectural efforts of man are quite impressive; nature’s architects leave me in awe – simple creatures creating the most complex things – the honeycomb of the bees, a spider’s web, a bowerbird nest, a coral reef.
I was scrabbling around out the back yesterday in amongst some leaf litter when I saw what I first thought was a weird dried flower of some description. On closer examination, the “flower” turned out to be a funnel made from Mallee tree leaves glued together somehow and leading into a hole in the ground. The camouflage was great, but the work on the funnel is amazing.
What made it I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it was a female mouse spider. It’s just a guess based on Niki the Wonder Dog’s encounter with a male red headed mouse spider a few weeks back only a few meters from this location. If you’ve seen this sort of structure before and know it to be made by something different, please let me know.
I’m not a fan of large, fearsome looking and venomous spiders, but I can’t help but appreciate the work that went into the construction of this burrow. I’m hoping the occupant will respect my boundary as much as I have respected its :).
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