Meet the Bold Jumper Spider. This jumping spider is most common here and a spider who has nothing to fear around me! I just as well have this Bold Jumper then say the Black Widow that we have here!

The Bold Jumping Spiders dinner for the day, fly! I call these flies Blow Flies. I can not hate the flies to much? They do after all pollinate my flowers, inside and outside, give the frogs and other critters something to eat….. everything has a purpose.

I should warn folks who do not like spiders, you may want to leave now?? I understand folks have phobias and the spider is one of these!! I have a sibling who is terrified of spiders. All the life I spent growing up with her I was the one who would come to the rescue of the spider who happened to be seen by this sibling. I dont recall ever teasing her with said spider, always thought that was rather cruel.

Lets start from the beginning. I was out doing my thing in the garden in September 2014 when this little jumper caught my eye. Never know what is going to capture my attention on any giving day! The jumper it looked like to me was transporting his meal down a hollyhock stalk?

I could have came inside the house and got one of my micro lenses, though if I did that I could have missed the whole show so I took the images here with my all around lens getting as close as I could. No the photographs are not cropped….

I like the orange on the abdomen of this Bold Jumper. They are pretty spiders!

I do spend time with these jumping spiders only because they interest me. The jumpers have always interested me. They do come inside the house, if I notice where one is I tell everyone to leave it alone.

You see the hollyhock stalk is like a road for the insects.

I am sure the dots on the abdomen is like what other insect species have? So the colorful dots will confuse predators into attacking the abdomen perhaps allowing the said insect to escape? Butterflies come to mind….. most folks who do not like some insects seam to like the butterfly.

The Orange comes in white and red as well. All the same species. If you notice it was no accident I got photographs of the orange coloration, the Bold Jumper kept turning his rear to me! This does not always happen, but after all this bold jumper did have dinner and who is to say I was not going to take his dinner away from him? Of course we know better but this jumper did not know any better at all ha

If you are reading this from mrsroadrunner.com/blog you are able to push on the photograph to make it bigger. Not sure the syndicated places have this feature?

As you may have noticed the Bold Jumper was not even thinking about eating right here. There was somewhere the little spider was processing in whatever mind spiders have to take his meal to a more secure location then being out in the open like he was at this time.

I like the above shot for you can see some of his eyes He has what eight eyes all together. You can see where I took the seeds pods off the hollyhock stalk and you can see the small “hairs”, of the hollyhock stalk. For those who are not aware we are avid gardeners. The hollyhocks get well over six feet tall here and I still have bags of all kinds of flower seeds to get into their proper containers. The seeds are gathered all through summer then during cold winter days either Guy or I or both of us go through all the seeds and put them where they go for storage.

I am again watching the woodpecker do his thing outside of my window as I write this. This woodpecker, who is a northern flicker just found out that we put suit out there….. neat when he found it. You could actually see the joy as he learned from the smaller birds the suite was there for everyone! Even a fight between the bigger woodpecker and a starling went on earlier! Starlings are not big on sharing, act like we put that out there just for them…… back to the spider – my mind kind of wondered off there, pulling it back in haha

I am fond of the jumping spiders for their incredible jumping ability. You can watch them as they see something good to eat, you can dang near see the gears going …. though not sure how much of a thinking ability they have? We had one inside the house there for a time. It would come out to hunt, see one of us there at first and hide from us. As time went by the bold jumper would no longer hide from any of us! The son who is not a big spider lover even came to me to tell me of that cool spider he was watching. Of course I let the men I live with be forewarned you do not kill these spiders…. they eat other spiders that I would rather not have inside or outside of the house!

I used to play with these as a child, I never ever remember getting bit by one…… We had a lot of them where I grew up there in Eugene Oregon! Our backyard was my first observation place for the visitors we had while growing up. I loved our big fenced backyard! Even though the soil was clay…… I still got things to grow and such things as the Bold Jumpers just flourished. Though unlike I am, my parents were not real big on spiders (or any insect for that matter, or snakes or a lot of the things that was found in my hands, pockets,bucket haha), etc…. I wished I could say as a small child ha!

The shot above was the last one I got before the Bold Jumper well… JUMPED. I just did not think he could do it! I cropped this image to get in tighter to this amazing creature getting ready with his heavy payload to jump….

Forget the cartoon characters, if we had something our size who could do such a thing as these bold spiders can do….. being the human species we are, we would have to use everything we have to kill such a species off! I just do not feel if something such as this spider was as big as humans are if we would be the top of the food chain. As I tell Guy who gets to see these photographs on my photo monitor before I decide what I am going to do with my photographs, I tell him now you know why I have the dreams that I do haha!

If insects really are the dominant species of our planet…. I watch way to much sci fi haha

Thank you for coming by and if you made it to this closing, I hope you enjoyed my photographs! If you did not make it this far, I understand!

More reading

http://www.spiders.us/species/filter/oregon/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phidippus_audax