Intro to Portland Spiders

In early April I went to Portland where I got two chances to look for spiders in park lands and found several more at urban houses. I have attempted to identify a few already and failed to reach high confidence in any of the species. So I will post highlights only to the blog until I do figure them out. Forest Park, Saturday Morning. The first spider I found in Forest Park was, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful. I thought it would be very easy to identify, but its patterning actually doesn't quite match any of the candidate species I've been evaluating. One of the biggest spiders I saw. I watched this one for quite a while travel between two sections of its web and perform some labor, which I thought was likely maintenance, but I really couldn't tell what it was doing. Found in a hollow in an upright tree. An unexpected confrontation. One of the littlest spiders I found, building a rather extended web. Some spiders actually have only 6 eyes, but it's also possible one pair is…