280 days of Urbpandemonium #8

[urbpan]

This young male nursery web spider, if it is capable of self-reflection, probably assumes that he is nearly invisible against his telephone pole perch. If it was a tree with light bark it would work better. He most likely hatched last year, from an egg case in a big sheet of a web well-guarded by his protective mother. Nursery web spiders are in the fishing spider family Pisauridae, a group characterized by being large (for New England--big females can have a 4 inch legspan) active hunters. I am fairly confident of my identification of this as a male Pisaurid (but always prepared to be contradicted by someone who knows better) and I'll even hazard a guess that he is Pisaurina mina, a common and variable species in our area.