#36 - TALES FROM THE FIELD #5

Before I begin today's fifth installment in my Tales from the Field series I'd like to request your help in increasing my readership. First, I hope all of you that use Facebook have liked the Kiss My Big Hairy Spider page. That is where I will be immediately announcing each post by sharing a direct link to the most recent blog entry. If you are following that page I ask that you share one or two to your own Facebook page or groups. As I mentioned earlier, because of the profanity contained in my "rants" I violated the rules of some groups and this has limited my ability to promote the blog. So don't share to Arachnoboards or ATS or something. It's kind of sad because America is so prude. Violence is celebrated in film and music, but "cuss words" and sex and graphic nudity are taboo. People shouldn't give a fuck about me using the word "fuck" in 2015. Anyway, I imagine those of you who use social media have many friends that are also into arachnoculture so if you can share one of my blog announcements to your personal page it would help. I am going to inquire about whether I would be able to banner advertise on Arachnoboards as an educational site. I'll offer to put a profanity warning on the banner. If you don't use social media, first, congratulations for being smarter than the rest of us! Second, please use email or word of mouth or smoke signals to tell your arachnofriends about KMBHS. 

Also, as you can see I am quick to respond to reader questions and suggestions. I want you all to be part of the KMBHS team. I received a very nice email from one reader (William) who asked about me writing a review on the new Tarantulas of the World book written by France's François Teyssié. I bought a signed copy of the book from François at the BTS Exhibition in May and as soon as I get a chance to look at it closer I certainly will post a review. You ask and I very likely will accommodate your request. Thanks all.


So, in TFTF #4 we started the journey into Sri Lanka. I promised the next entry in the series would focus on spider hunting and here we will visit the Makandawa rainforest outside of Kitulgala, Sri Lanka in search of Poecilotheria ornata. Kitulgala is best known for two things. First, it is where the movie The Bridge On The River Kwai, which won the 1957 Academy Award for Best Film, was shot. The movie was based on the 1952 French war novel The Bridge Over the River Kwai. Kitulgala is where they built the bridge over the river Kelani, which was later demolished after the movie was completed. The entire film was shot in Sri Lanka despite being set in Thailand. Kitulgala is also known as the white water rafting capital of Sri Lanka. The Kelani River has significant rapids and the town has a number of raft adventure outfitters.

We arrived in the afternoon and found a nice hotel overlooking the river and marveled at the dense jungle on the other side of the Kelani as we had a round of cold beers. The following morning between a few of the rafting outfitters a couple miles from the hotel we found our own foot bridge across Kelani Ganga or the Kelani River. As you can see from the photograph, it was a narrow and wobbly bridge and a sign at each end warned that only three people could be on the bridge at a time. I figured three Sri Lankans meant only one of me and tried to cross on my own. In my lectures on this field trip I showed video of me crossing and at the midpoint I realized that a small elderly woman was coming towards me and my weight was making her bounce up and down. I can only imagine what the huge white man looked like to her. I stood still and allowed her to pass. Once we reached the other side we saw that there was a small village with little houses on each side of a dirt path. We saw huge webs holding Nephila pilipes and stopped to photograph them. "Tourists" who cross the bridge generally are looking for the remnants of the film's bridge and we did our best to ask the villagers which way to go. However, we never found the correct site, but did find the path to take us on to the official entrance of the Makandawa rainforest.

Nephila pilipes female & male © Michael Jacobi

The path winds past little homes for some time before disappearing into the rainforest. This is lowland "jungle" and it was warm and humid. We marched on marveling at the huge Nephila webs. At one point we all stopped to photograph a big female with a legspan of six inches or so, and noticed that there was a tiny orange-red male mating with her. Known as "the large wood spider", Nephila pilipes can have a body length of two inches and a legspan approaching eight. The male has a body length of only about one quarter of an inch.

These beautiful Nephila were common in this lowland rainforest and there was another half-grown female in a web right behind this big female. Their golden orb web is irregular, not symmetrical as in may orb weavers, and the "hub" is often near the top.

As we all took our turns to capture photographs such as the one at the right, Mark made an even more exciting discovery. Apparently as our eyes were upon the trees in search of our primary quarry - Poecilotheria ornata - and we kept looking at orb weavers we had missed something perfectly camouflaged on our path. This would embarrass a veteran snake hunter like myself as he pointed down to a two-foot long viper. I warned him that it was venomous and the snake cooperatively stayed still to allow another photo session. It was a beautiful hump-nosed viper, Hypnale hypnale, and I was glad that none of us had stepped on it.

Hypnale hypnale © Michael Jacobi

This 20 foot stretch of path would hold one more wonder, something that Guy was particularly excited to see. As we had spent about ten minutes in this location to photograph both the spider and snake in turn, he had looked about in the adjacent bushes and found an Atlas moth caterpillar. Paul and Guy know much more about insects than I do, and Guy's brother works with butterflies and moths. This was the first Atlas caterpillar Guy had seen and it was huge!

Attacus atlas caterpillar © Michael Jacobi

The most common lizard in this forest was the Sri Lankan or Brown-patched Kangaroo lizard (Otocryptis wiegmanni). It is a ground dweller that gets its name from the way it hops about in the leaf litter and low brush. The first image is of a male and the second is a female with mud on her face, presumably for digging for insect larvae that makes up a big part of their diet.

As we forged on deeper away from the homes and into the Makandawa rainforest we would see these small lizards hopping about in the wet undergrowth.

Eventually we reached a little station where we would have to pay a fee and a get a ticket to enter the official boundary of Makandawa. It had been quite a hike to get this far and I wondered how many people actually arrived here each day. I expect the man selling the tickets spent most days napping. We would later see some locals passing from village to village, but we certainly were the only "tourists" that day. The entrance was actually pretty nice and the hut had a pool in front that displayed and identified the local fishes. This was wet "jungle" and we would cross many clear streams with various fishes many of which I recognized from the aquarium hobby. With all the camera gear I carry we look like photographers and our story is always mostly true. That is, that Paul and Guy are both educators who teach children about the rainforest and its inhabitants and I am an author and photographer. We make sure we never mention that we are looking for any specific animals or reveal that our target is theraphosid spiders. The majority of foreign visitors to the Makandawa reserve are looking to see its astonishing diversity of birds and whenever possible I would make a big show of photographing a bird to avoid any suspicion. Even though we don't collect, wildlife officials are on the lookout for people who show a special interest in reptiles, spiders or insects and I would snap scenic images, buildings, whatever whenever I was in sight of any locals.

We had a little rest at the ticket shack and read the signs and looked at the displayed fishes. Then we pushed on deeper and deeper into the rainforest. The following image shows one of the streams that we would cross while doing our best to keep our boots dry. Nothing else on me was dry as the heat and humidity already had me a sweaty mess.

Here is Guy deep in the wet rainforest. These streams contained all of the fishes we had seen displayed at the forest entrance as well as fishing spiders and aquatic insects. They were shallow and we were able to cross them by stepping from rock to rock, some obviously placed as a path by the villagers who often moved through this forest.

We pressed on looking for the sort of trees we expected would hold P. ornata. We were sure this spider would be found here as years earlier Andrew Smith had found one near the site of the River Kwai bridge site. The lowland rainforest seemed ideal for this large and beautiful "tiger" or "leopard" or "parachute" or "ornamental" tarantula. The photo below shows a very happy Paul Carpenter who located the tree hole holding our first Poecilotheria ornata of the trip and the only one that we would find on this first trek into Makandawa.

Paul Carpenter points to the tree hole where he located our first Poecilotheria ornata © Michael Jacobi

We set up our gear including a camera on a tripod for shooting video. I also was using my iPhone to shoot HD video throughout the trip. In my February BTS lecture and March ArachnoGathering lecture (both titled "Sri Lanka: In Search of Leopard Spiders") I showed video clips of our field work. These will eventually be made into a film that will be available on my Exotic Fauna YouTube channel.

Paul "tickled the girl out of her hole and we discovered that she only had seven legs. We weren't disappointed though ... we were ecstatic. My favorite tarantula is Poecilotheria subfusca and my second is P. ornata. This was my first in situ P. ornata and I was overjoyed. I filmed Paul working her out of the hole with a stick, and once she was completely out and the hole was blocked we did our best to pose her for the photo shoot that would follow. Some images were taken quickly, but as we set up to get the best shots we briefly took our eyes off our seven-legged girl and she decided to ascend the tree.

The chaos that ensued is best shown by video, but we worked as a team to take on roles to retrieve the spider that was now a good twenty feet above the ground. Paul and I looked for tall saplings that could be used as brooms to sweep her back down the tree trunk. We were very successful and, as I like to say, this wasn't our first rodeo. Paul, especially, has been chasing tarantulas for over 20 years all around the world. We found some long branches and directed her back down to pose her for our final photo shoot before we would eventually direct her right back into the hole where we found her. We always return the spiders to the retreat they occupied when we discovered them.

I shot this image with a 200 mm lens as the spider was at least 25 feet above the ground. © Michael Jacobi

Portrait of a seven-legged Poecilotheria ornata female © Michael Jacobi

This was the only Poecilotheria we would find on our first day. We packed up for the long hike back out and hit the trail thinking about how good that first cold Lion Lager was going to taste after one of many amazing and successful days in the field. We would return to Makandawa to search for more P. ornata the following morning and that is where we will pick up the story with TFTF #6.

Thanks for reading, MJ

My cameras pose in the Makandawa Reserve © Michael Jacobi