What a cute little spider you are! Photographed on our Verbena where we normally photograph flying insects. We have never seen one prior to this sighting yesterday.
In our attempt to get a better photograph it fell off... "You horrible humans, it took me ages to climb to the top of that plant..."
The Goldenrod spider is a member of the Crab Spider family, you can see the resemblance!
It may be small but if you look on the Royal Albert Museum link there is a photograph of it eating a honey bee... It is obviously not that cute!!
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They'll take surprisingly large prey, who never even see them normally -- their camo is so good. I've seen crab spiders take bumblebees and large hawkmoths.
And she did it siiiiideways!!
Misumena vatia doesn't have a common name in the UK or Europe....
but I think that the alternative US name of Flower Spider suits it very well....
She ranges from this almost white, through yellow to pale green....
and she may or may not have the orange side stripes.
If you can spot her on a white flower in this dress, you'll be lucky!
That camoflage us excellent...
she is one hell of a huntress!
The Larousse Guide to Spiders has a picture of a white one...
like this....
with the titchy male riding piggy back....
he fits ACROSS her abdomen!!
This is quite a good site for European spiders:
This is her page....
shows the male...
http://www.eurospiders.com/Misumena_vatia.htm
Lovely pix, one of my favouirite spiders....
Very pretty...what size is it actually...minus zoom?
Jim, the individual verbena flower heads are about 2mm across. So not big at all...
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