Living in a rural area with several out buildings on the property, I am no stranger to spiders. I’ve never been afraid of them, but I developed a deeper appreciation for them after spending some time in Australia with a friend who actually allowed them to live in his home as part of his insecticide free pest control program. I don’t go quite that far, but I do find them fascinating.

Usually when we think of spiders we think about lacy webs spun between trees or in porch corners trapping insect prey, but not all spiders actually live that way. I have several water troughs and a small pond on my property, and those features have attracted frogs, lizards, birds, and white banded fishing spiders.

I first ran into the fishing spiders not too long after I moved here (many, many years ago). I was adding water to a water trough for the dogs and the goat that I had at the time, and realized there was a good sized, dark colored spider in the water. I grabbed a stick and gently fished it out of the water and carried it off to the woods. While I was doing that I noticed that this spider wasn’t floundering around, but it was actually running along the top of the water. I wasn’t into photography then, and we didn’t have the internet either (I told you it was a long time ago!), so it took more work, but I was able to identify my little friend as a white banded fishing spider.

White banded fishing spiders mainly eat insects, but they also hunt and eat tadpoles and small fish. They can even dive, and survive under the water for short periods. They stalk their prey rather than trapping it, and they only build a rough web to house their spiderlings just before they hatch out. I suspected the one I “rescued” from the water trough was hunting tadpoles. It probably really didn’t appreciate being scooped out of the water on a stick and carried off into the woods! Oops.