Nursery web spider

Description:

Here is a female nursery web spider guarding her spiderlings. In the first two pictures you can see a close-up of the mother. The third picture shows her guarding the spiderlings. The spiderlings are in the folded-over leaf to the right of the mother. The next two pictures are of the spiderlings inside the leaf. I did not open up the leaf or disturb them - there was an opening at the top of the leaf and I shot through that. These spiders are large and look kind of scary, but they are not at all aggressive. I spent a good 10 minutes taking pictures of the mother and the babies, moving the plant around in my hand to get a better angle and getting very close, but the mother only kept watch.