Not many of these about - I hope!

[Cetti]

This is still climbing up  the outside of our house and it's a lot bigger than a House Spider!

I now know what it is but I thought at first sight it was some exotic species. My hands are still shaking, so  it's a miracle I could take the pic let alone type. Has anyone seen one of these ladies before?

[donnamay]

what does it look like?

[HAnn521]

Crikey!  that is scary!

[HAnn521]

great pic though...you must have an awesome camera...

[burnhal]

go to http://bubl.ac.uk/link/s/spiders.htm

select Arachniea, Spiders of NW Europe and its the first one that comes up. Tiger or wasp spider. What an awesome beast!!

[Cetti]

Luckily it's in a little book called Collins Garden Wildlife and goes by the name of Ariope bruennichi.  Naturally being so huge - it's a female, the male is rarely seen and found  in southern and central Europe........and only on the coast of southern England. Lucky me.

It's an Olympus C-765 Ultra Zoom HAnn .....not quite all 'bells and whistles' but pretty good for wildlife stuff.

[Cetti]

Yes you're right burnhal, it is the Wasp spider. I just had the latin name. Apparently it's only been seen in this country since the 1940's, so I'm quite chuffed - although I think my husband will have to take it to the back of the garden pretty soon.

It really is very large!

[Robinia]

Crikey Cetti I'm not afraid of spiders but that's a bit unnerving if you don't know what it is!!

Funnily enough I was watching a garden spider on the outside of my window this afternoon carefully wrapping up a wasp & I thought she was scary enough!

[Kingaroo]

gosh, it's hard to judge the size from your otherwaise beautiful photo. Couldn't you have put it on your finger for scale? (tee hee)

[Robinia]

Good point Kingaroo - come on Cetti lets see you standing underneath it!!

[Cetti]

I did say it was big because I am there, can't you see me?

[Robinia]

So you are - I've enlarged it & I see you now, underneath it's back leg on the right! 

[FP]

OMG!!    It's amazing!

At the moment our cottage must be hosting a convention for oversized house spiders.  They are everywhere, including in my pile of ironing.  I don't mind them if they keep their distance, but I have never seen so many huge spiders in one place before. 

However, the cats are doing a good job of keeping the numbers down - every morning there are several dead ones lying about!

[FP]

Donnamay, if you click on the word This in Cetti's question you will see a picture of the spider.