3:00PM BST 22 Oct 2008
Photographs of a giant spider eating a bird in an Australian garden have stunned wildlife experts.
The pictures show the spider with its long black legs wrapped around the body of a dead bird suspended in its web.
The startling images were reportedly taken in Atheron, close to Queensland's tropical north.
Despite their unlikely subject matter, the pictures appear to be real.
Joel Shakespeare, head spider keeper at the Australian Reptile Park, said the spider was a Golden Orb Weaver.
"Normally they prey on large insects… it's unusual to see one eating a bird," he told ninemsn.com.
Mr Shakepeare said he had seen Golden Orb Weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger.
Queensland Museum identified the bird as a native finch called the Chestnut-breasted Mannikin.
Mr Shakespeare told ninemsn the bird must have flown into the spider web and become stuck.
"It wouldn't eat the whole bird," he said.
"It uses its venom to break down the bird for eating and what it leaves is a food parcel," he said.
Greg Czechura from Queensland Museum said cases of the Golden Orb Weaver eating small birds were "well known but rare".
"It builds a very strong web," he said.
But he said the spider would not have attacked until the bird weakened.
The Golden Orb Weaver spins a strong web high in protein because it depends on it to capture large insects for food.
Tom and Judy Phillips captured startling images of a giant golden orb weaver spider feasting on the bird in their greenhouse.
The couple, of Townsville in Queensland, sent the images to website ninemsn.com. "It was a big spider," Mr Phillips said.
The pictures recall photographs taken by retiree Les Martin. Mr Martin's photos, which emerged last week, showed another a golden orb weaver eating a finch.
In the attack, which took place in Atherton, also in Queensland, the spider "pumped poison into the dead bird's head" but was unable to eat the entire bird.
According to Mr and Mrs Phillips, the spider in their photographs had no such problem.
Before it started eating the finch, the spider had wrapped it up in its web.
"You couldn’t see any of the bird by the end of it," Mr Phillips said.
The spider took three days to eat the bird, Mrs Phillips said.
The finch landed in trouble when it flew into the spider's strong web and became trapped.
"By the time we noticed it, it was dead," Mr Phillips said.
"How long it was there [before the spider came along] is a bit unknown."
Greg Czechura from the Queensland Museum identified the bird in the Phillips' photos as a double-barred finch about 10cm long.
Cases of spiders eating birds in Queensland were rare, and Mr Czechura attributed the apparent increase to "urban sprawl" compacting spider habitats.
"There's no sinister co-conspiring of the golden orb weavers to take out the local bird population," he told ninemsn.
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