14 June 2013 – Love Thy Spider

Posted on 31 May, 2013 by Connecting Country

The Castlemaine Field Naturalist Club’s guest speaker on 14 June 2013 will be local resident, Lynne Kelly, who will give a talk entitled ‘Love thy Spider‘. Lynne comments that ‘We all live up close to lots of neighbouring spiders. They live amazingly interesting, often traumatic, lives, all played out on multiple stages around your house. Spiders are the only animal you can get to know as individuals and watch over the long term in their natural habitat of web or burrow. ‘

This talk will include sequences of photos of individuals in a Castlemaine backyard and house and is suitable for kids as well as adults. Lynne says that ‘observing spiders is easy to do, safe and genuinely adds to our scientific knowledge. Long term behavioural studies of our spiders in their natural habitats have not been done – not even black house spiders! But – be warned – there will be some very revealing photos of a pair of huntsmen. We’ll then talk about “The Spiderblogger” and the way we can share Castlemaine spider notes.’

Lynne Kelly

Lynne is the author of 14 books, her most recent being “Spiders: learning to love them“. When her arachnophobia was getting out of control, she decided to cure the irrational fear by learning about the horrible hairy beasts. She overdid the cure and is now ‘obsessed by the gorgeous little critters’.

Lynne is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at LaTrobe University, working on the way indigenous peoples memorise masses of information about animals, plants and other natural sciences. She then applies this research to the archaeological record.

The talk will be held at the Uniting Church Hall in Lyttleton St, Castlemaine (building behind the church), and will commence from 7.30pm. Everyone is welcome.