Lichen Huntsman Spider

Description:

Sparassidae; Heteropodinae; Pandercetes sp. (poss.) I would like to suggest that this spotting should be read in conjunction with: https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/62..., my original spotting of this spider two days ago. The 1st. Photo was taken yesterday morning and shows the mother still sitting guarding her egg sack. Nothing appears different from the first spotting pictures. The next 4 pictures show what I saw this morning when I checked again, hundreds of tiny hatchlings crawling all around the mother who is still guarding the sack. More still to hatch? Most of the hatchlings seem to be at the side of the mother or behind her. I don't know if this is just random behaviour or are they instinctively keeping away from "the dangerous end" of the mother, but any conclusion would only be speculative. The last photo was taken just a couple of hours ago and the mother is still "on guard duty".

Habitat:

This branch with the mother spider and her egg sack has been kept in an outbuilding for the last two days (for safety and observation). Later today, before dark, I will place the branch back outside, against the tree it was cut from. This should allow these tiny baby spiders to disperse into their natural habitat. Hopefully I will see some of them when they are full grown.

Notes:

I must apologise for the pictures. It is quite difficult to see any detail. This is only partly my fault (I use a not-too-expensive camera and I am not a good photographer), but you can blame the spider. It has the best camouflage I have seen in nature. To try and make the spiders more visible, I have over sharpened and over brightened these pictures. So please do not take the pictures to true representations of how the spiders look in reality. However, I have been looking at much more professional photos than mine on the internet and even there I can't see much more than can be seen in my snapshots.