The Lyons Share

This is the Spitting Spider Scytodes thoracica, a strange little synanthropic spider that appeared from behind my keyboard at work on Monday morning. It took the best part of fifteen minutes of persistent photography to get this image but it was worth it in the end. It's only the third one I have ever seen. The first was shown to me in the RSPB Lodge library by Ian Dawson, the second in my last house in Brighton some three years ago. It's not all that rare but you clearly don't see them often even when you know they are present. 

Anyway, at 6 mm, it's a bit of a midget compared to the extremely rare Fen Raft Spider Dolomedes plantarius that we have been surveying all week at Pevensey on the back of an a aquatic macrophyte survey there. I'll write a separate blog about these beasts as they totally deserve it. Here is a taster...