The Lyons Share

So I'm poking around a wall in a park in Chichester looking directly at the biggest spider I have ever seen in Britain in the wild (no kidding!), but how did this all come to be? Well, I knew I was going to be doing a farm survey today and I would finish up near Chichester around lunch time. I was tempted by the Black Stork on the other side of the New Forest but I didn't fancy another 100 mile car journey and I'd like to do the New Forest properly, not rushing around after some bird. I needed something more local to satisfy my daily natural history fix, so I tried an experiment. I posted this request on Twitter:

I got a response from none other than Buglife's Matt Shardlow. Amongst other things he told me that Chichester was a good site for Segestria florentina. I found what I thought would be a suitable looking wall and began my search. Plenty of Steatoda nobilis and Armadillidium depressum, two spiders with large chelicerae but they very quickly retreated into their holes. After about an hour's searching, I found one and using a twig to emulate a fly trapped in the web, I lured it slowly out. A leg came out that could only belong to a MASSIVE spider and when I finally saw its whole body I have to say I was quite surprised and a little jumpy. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the biggest spider I have seen. Roberts states the females can be up to 2.2 cm long, coupled with the huge thick hairy legs and the formidable looking green 'fangs', this is one mean looking spider. I couldn't get enough of it and showed a few interested people that walked past that didn't think I was a weirdo. Here are the best shots, enjoy!