Garden Orb Weaver. Eriophora transmarina

These spiders make complex circular webs of very sticky silk. They hang in the middle of their webs at night and hide among foliage or bark at night. Their webs are the ones hikers and gardeners run into in the dusk because it is dusk when they rebuild them after a day of hiding in a nearby shelter.

The photograph above is of one of those spiders hanging across a trail in the bush. She is very large and heavy but will do anything she can to avoid running into us. When disturbed she will often drop to the ground and hide her head in leaf litter.

The spider on the bark below is a large male who has been disturbed while wooing an equally large female. The red spider at the bottom is a huge female in her refuge on the bark of a Parramatta Red Gum

More Garden Orb Weaving Spiders....

There are a number of similar species which are impossible for most of us to tell apart. They can all be identified under the name Garden Orb Weavers for the purposes of knowing what we have in our gardens