Crab spider
Misumena vatia · Spiders
Crab spider, on cow parsley
The Cotswolds, 12 June 2025
A crab spider on a hogweed flowerhead in a Cotswold meadow, front legs held out wide the way crab spiders do at rest, ready to grab whatever lands within reach rather than chasing anything down. It is a spider of flowery grassland and hedgerow across Britain and Europe, and a big umbellifer head in June is its hunting ground.
White with a red stripe along each side of the abdomen. This species can change colour between white and yellow over a few days to match the flower it is sitting on, and takes bees and hoverflies much larger than itself, holding them with the two long front pairs of legs while the venom works.
Crab spider
The Cotswolds, 12 June 2025
A crab spider sitting motionless among the flowers in a Cotswold meadow in June, in no web at all. Misumena vatia lives on the flowers of meadows and hedgerows across Britain, Europe and North America, and hunts by ambush from the middle of a bloom.
White with a streak of red down each side of the abdomen. It can shift between white and yellow over a few days to match whatever flower it is sitting on; the colour change is real but too slow to watch happen. It takes bees far larger than itself, and the bite is quick enough that the bee is dead before it can sting.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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