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Showing posts from March 14, 2010

An entangled business 一網打盡

This morning after hanging out the laundry, I discovered a newly woven spider web, anchored on a pine shrub on one side and small bushes on another side. That was actually quite a large span, and the web itself was also quite large with a diameter of about 30 cm. It wasn’t too hard to spot the web under bright sunlight. 今天早上在後花園晾衣服後,驀然發現一個新的蜘蛛網。這個網一端繫在松樹,一端繫在較矮的花叢,展開來頗大,直徑有30厘米左右,在耀眼的陽光反射下顯而易見。 What made the web noteworthy was not its size – I’ve in fact seen larger ones, and won’t be surprised if they were spun by the same spider – but how effective it was. After 3 hours or so, 20 or 30 small flying insects have already fallen prey and were trapped by this web. I was quite stunned with the success of this web. Its size obviously helped, although there were also big gaps in between threads to allow so many other small insects to fly through. But it wouldn’t be a big surprise that those unsuspecting insects wound eventually get caught when they have flown enough times. The spider obviou