Some common orb-weaving spiders in eastern Australia

Here are some of the more common orb-weaving spiders from the east coast of Australia.

St Andrew’s Cross Spider with a nice, clear cross pattern in its web. Most of the time you won’t see such a well-formed cross.

This close-up view of another one gives a better look at the decorated abdomen. Both the spiders in these shots are females.

St Andrew’s Cross Spider

What’s not to love about the St Andrew’s Cross spider? It’s colourful, harmless and eats the things that bother us. If you’re lucky you’ll find one with a clear diagonal cross in the centre of the web like the one in the photo at right. That gives a clue as to how this spider got its name, because the white diagonal cross in the Union Jack just happens to be St Andrew’s Cross from the flag of Scotland.

This decorative spider hangs head-downwards in the middle of its web, with its legs stretched out over the cross. The ones you’ll see are most probably females because the males are smaller and harder to find. Look around the edges of the web and you might see a male. It has a similar shape to the female but is smaller and less colourful.

Golden Orb Weaver

Nephila ornata

Here’s another common spider around Sydney, especially around late summer and early Autumn when you might find lots of them hanging around places like power lines and trees. The photo at right should help you recognise it. I could easily fill a page just with these spiders, so I did.

Other Nephila spiders

There are other spiders in this group. It’s pretty safe to call them Golden Orb Weavers.

In northern Australia they can get pretty big. The spider in the picture at right, for example, was about the size of my outstretched hand.

Living in the tropical north of Australia, these handsome critters make very strong — and big — orb webs. Their web is so strong that some indigenous people have found some clever uses for them. For example, they might swing a stick through their webs, tangling up the spiders and their webs, and use those spidery tangles to lure and trap fish.

These spiders eat insects that get caught in the web, and I’ve seen pictures of them eating birds too. With a web so big (over a metre across) and strong it’s not surprising that could sometimes happen — very occasionally — but I stress that birds are not their usual diet.

I often smile at Hollywood movies which all too often feature Nephila spiders in one of their jungle scenes. We’re obviously supposed to think the 8-legged beastie hanging in its web is a bad thing, but like I said earlier, the truth is they are not dangerous to people at all.

Garden Orb Weaver

If you walk out your front door in the morning and get a face full of giant orb web that wasn’t there the day before, then chances are you’ve got a Garden Orb Weaver. This is a common spider — actually a common group of similar spiders from different species — and people with the above-mentioned face-full of web might argue they’re a little too common. I’ve lost count of the number of encounters I’ve had with these webs and will happily admit I have yet to enjoy the experience, yet I still love seeing these spiders around.

Garden Orb Weavers, or as some prefer to call them, Garden Spiders, make a new web each night, more often than not where you least expect it. They hang around in it until the morning when they’ll climb up to hide under a leaf or some other shelter like the eaves of your house. If you find their big empty web during the day you can usually locate the spider by looking for convenient hiding spots above their web and near where one of the support strands is attached. The spider will be hunched up trying not to be seen by predators.

These spiders are big, heavy-bodied, hairy, and harmless. They are mostly grey or brown. Because they make a new web each night, you can get a good chance to watch how they make them.

Two-spined Spider

Two-spined Spider

Poecilopachys bispinosa

I enjoy finding these ones. They have a small orb web and their abdomen is adorned with two very conspicuous spines. Watching these under high magnification is amazing, because those bold patterns and spots actually move! Yep, strange but true: the spots and bands pulsate in a way that lets the spider change colour.

Six-spined Spider

Six-spined Spider

Another strange but also beautiful spider. The abdomen is large and has those prominent spines, which certainly explains the name. The rest of the abdomen is decorated with spots and stripes. These ones were photographed in the Southern Highlands district of NSW but they will turn up in each of the states of Australia

Spiny Spider

Spiny Spider

If you thought the previous two spiders were odd, then have a good look at these ones. You’ll see them in the centre of their webs, and there are lots of them in northern Queensland.