European garden spider

Description:

This and the following spottings will show one of my favorite spiders: Araneus diadematus without or with diverse prey. It is a very common species here in Belgium. The webs are built by the larger females who usually lie head down on the web, or in a nearby leaf (with a signal thread attached to a leg), waiting for prey to get entangled in the web. The prey is then quickly captured and wrapped in silk before being eaten. Orb spiders are said to eat their webs each night along with many of the small insects stuck to it. They have been observed doing this within a few minutes. A new web is then spun in the morning.