birding-aus

Bird eating spider?

To: Steve <>
Subject: Bird eating spider?
From: David Stowe <>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:12:13 +1100
Hi Steve,
Can i cheekily suggest that by "rescuing" the finch you were indeed championing the cause of birds over other animals? It died anyway and the spider lost a meal that it caught fair and square :)

Cheers
Dave Stowe


On 16/03/2008, at 7:46 AM, Steve wrote:

Belinda......The other day I rescued a Double-barred Finch from Spiderweb. The bird was totally exhausted and,unfortunately, died shortly after. This was very sad. But it would not have occurred to me to kill the spider. My advice is to have equal regard for all native creatures and not champion the
causes of birds over other animals.

Cheers Steve Murray

-----Original Message-----
From: 
On Behalf Of Belinda Cassidy
Sent: Saturday, 15 March 2008 6:47 PM
To: 
Subject: [Birding-Aus] Bird eating spider?

Hello!

We have an enormous spider in our yard (in Brisbane) that we haven't seen before. Its spectacular, with a body length around 7-8 cm. I think I have ID'd it correctly as `Nephila pilipes' The Northern Giant Orb spider. The
link to the photo I took of it today is below:

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj144/Serenity-photos/SPIDER.jpg

So when I was trying to ID it on google, I came across a youtube video of one of these eating a young lewin honeyeater that it had trapped in its
nest. OMG!

We are friends with our local birds and wouldn't want to see them eaten by a
giant spider! But its also a  very cool giant spider!

Should we kill it to stop it from eating birds and breedng up a colony of giant bird eating spiders? Or just leave it? I don't want to kill it, but
then I'd feel pretty cut if a young bird I know died in its web.

Thanks for your opinions!

Cheers,
Belinda
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