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For one thing, many more species of spider exist than species of bird. About as many spider species exist just in New York and New England as there are bird species in all of North America north of Mexico. In the US, there's no pocket-size field guide we can carry with us expecting to identify every spider we meet, as we do with birds. Amateur spider watchers must forgo the pleasure of making lists of every spider species seen. European spider-watchers have it a little easier, first because they have many fewer spider species than in the US, plus they have a guide called Collins Field Guide: Spiders of Britain and Northern EuropeHowever, all is not lost for Americans. There is at least one small, commonly available field guide illustrating and describing the most common spider species, many of them the very ones found in our backyards. It's one of the Golden Nature Guides, almost always available in mall bookstores, called Spiders and Their Kin, by Herbert and Lorna Levi, and published by Golden Press of New York. There could hardly be a better first introduction to spiders than this. Using this book I was able to identify the Fishing Spider, Dolomedes triton, pictured at the right, and photographed in a small pond in Kentucky. This common species, as you see, lives in or near water. It captures insects and sometimes even tadpoles and small fish! The flaky things around the spider atop the water are Duckweed, a tiny aquatic plant.

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16y ago

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