Wildlife: Birdsters! 'Februrary FIRSTS' Pls. Post Here!, 1 by kennedyh

kennedyh wrote:
I have been watching and enjoying this thread, especially the close-ups of birds of prey, but have not seen anything new or special in the bird line this month over here.
On Saturday however I did have a first for our garden, in fact only the second I have ever seen and the previous one was in Tasmania, 20 years ago. Fay was reorganising all the potted plants on our patio and as she moved each pot she checked underneath for any hiding snails. One did not have a snail tucked into its base, but this Red-back Spider Latrodectus hasselti. She let me have the chance to photograph it before it was destroyed and then proceeded to check all the other pots very carefully indeed! The Red-back is a very close cousin of the American Black Widow Spider, and is sometimes reckoned to be the same species. It is just as poisonous, being one of the most deadly spiders, matched only by the Sydney Funnel-web Atrax robustus.
Needless to say, this was not a welcome visitor to our garden, although I must admit to having been delighted at the chance to photograph it. This is the female redback, the male is much smaller, has no red mark and is apparently not dangerous.