Far North residents have been fascinated by a strange, stringy substance that has been floating around recently. Photo / Boyce Lawrence
Far North residents have been fascinated by a strange, stringy substance that has been floating around recently. Photo / Boyce Lawrence
A strange, stringy substance floating through the air and blanketing streets, paddocks and buildings has had Northland residents scratching their heads.
The strands that were also recently spotted in other parts of the country have made their way up to Northland.
Residents in Coopers Beach, Mangōnui and Doubtless Bay havereported sightings of what looks like cobwebs drifting through the sky and clinging to various surfaces.
One expert believes it is a phenomenon called ballooning, while another is not convinced of this.
“There was a very light easterly wind and the sun was getting low, I saw these white webs waving vertically. They were about two or three metres long and slowly drifted past our house, coming from across the Mangōnui Harbour.”
He said they also drove to Rangiputa about 11am and the “white webs” could be seen covering whole paddocks when viewed from a particular angle.
Boyce Lawrence from Rangiputa picked up a heap of the substance and wrapped it around his hand.
“It’s definitely some type of cobweb,” he said.
“It didn’t feel as sticky as ordinary cobwebs; it’s a really fine, silky strand.
”I bent down to pick it up and it was really hard to see. I could see the paddock practically covered in it as the sunlight reflected off it.”
Lawrence said he believed it was a natural phenomenon.
Associate Professor of Entomology at Lincoln University, Cor Vink, agreed and said he believed it to be “ballooning”, an occurrence where spiders use silk to glide through the air and move to new locations.
“Spiders usually do it when there has been flooding and they are wanting to move to a drier area.”
Residents in Doubtless Bay have been fascinated by a strange, stringy substance that has been floating around recently. Photo / Bee Barrett
He said spiders such as the New Zealand garden wolf spider and the weedspider are among the species that use this method to move about.
“It happens quite often and it has happened in Northland before … most spiders are active in the night and they would have done it at night and by the morning they would have moved on and the silk strands would have settled into trees and other areas.”
Senior lecturer in environmental science at AUT, Dr Leilani Walker, who has a particular interest in entomology and arachnology, said based on the images, she couldn’t say with certainty it was spider silk.
She said it looked too thick and spider silk was thinner than human hair.
“The only reason we see it is because of reflection. Even the thickest spider silk is way thinner than [threads] we use to make clothes out of.”
She said spiders usually balloon in summer and one of the reasons was that they sensed a storm approaching.
“They can sense when there will be a storm, they can sense the electrical potential building in the air and they use that to pull themselves up into the atmosphere.”
She said it may also just be relatively late in the year for them to be ballooning.
“They usually do it in summer, it’s late in the season, but it could happen.”
