A small 1/2 inch long green-bellied caterpillar with 4 pairs of legs, a brown back and a black head in a brown thatched-backed spider's web. They are situated about 4 feet up from the base of a 25ft tall spruce tree. The tree has radial splays of needles with double stomata on each side. They are spiky to touch.
I took this picture back in high school. This little spider spent over a week weaving and reweaving a really pretty, big orb web in the glass door of my back den. If you look closely at the picture that black blob by its head is a fly it's eating. Yum.
Also called a "European Cross spider" because of the pretty markings on it's back. I think it looks more like a fleur de lys but maybe that's just me.
This one is a female, the males are much much smaller.
The European garden spider (Araneus diadematus), diadem spider, or cross spider, is a very common and well-known orb-weaver spider in Western Europe. Araneus diadematus also lives in parts of North America, in a range extending from New England and the Southeast to California and the Northwestern United States and adjacent parts of Canada.
