Spider and the fly

Just as I was walking past our conservatory, a fly flew straight in front of me and landed in a cobweb, it started to struggle, going round and round trying it's hardest to get away.

The Spider ran down the web from where she was hiding out under the window,  she began to spin insanely round and round with the fly while wrapping the bottom half of the fly up in a few pieces of web.

Once the spider had secured the fly, it looked like she was feeding from the flies abdominal segment while the fly was thrashing it's legs about wildly.

After a bit the fly stopped moving so I ran inside to get a piece of white paper to put behind the window to make the photos clearer.

Richard Comont very kindly identified these as a house fly and a Zygiella x-notata (Missing Sector Orb Spider)

Spinning

It was both fascinating and disgusting at the same time!

Wrapped up

The spider then left the fly and went back to hiding under the window frame.
In this photo you can see the missing sectors in the web therefore the name Missing Sector Orb weaver spider.

I went to see Steve Backshall do a talk last night and one of the topics he was talking about was arachnophobia, he said in defense of spiders you have to think about how many flies there would be if there were no spiders