Every night around 7:30 - 8:00, a really big spider, about 2 inches across from leg to leg make a rather large web in front of my outside light. It takes her about 1.5 to 2 hours to complete the web and the eating must be good since I saw she molted about 3 days ago. By morning, all traces of the web are gone. I've been watching her for about 2 weeks now. I'd like to get an ID on her but can't seem to find one on an image search of brown spiders with big abdomens.

The first picture is of the web .. it's terrible I know and you have to click on it to see the web structure but its the best I could do with a flash - she's down at 6 o'clock with her first meal of the night. The 2nd picture is the front of the spider and 3rd, the back side. Anyone know who she is?

Spiders are so cool!

Indeed they are! I love to watch those huge Argiope spiders aka Writing Spider .. they don't take down their webs at night. I had them all over my yard at my old house but only had one last year at my new house .. I kind of miss them! They are great hunters!

Wish I could get an ID on my night hunter.

I don't have any argiope this year

I love watching spiders but I really don't like walking into their webs,

They are fascinating to watch! We have one that we watch every night too.

For the last 2 nights, my spider has spun webs only about 2/3 the normal size I've seen before .. I'm thinking that she's not catching enough bugs to make the bigger web. It takes a lot of energy to spin a web and I found out that spiders that spin orbed webs actually eat their webs when they take down their webs in the morning .. the silk has some protein in it. What an awesome recycler!

Anne check this page out, it might be an orb spider. I love spiders!
http://www.spiderzrule.com/orb...

Thanks for the link Ronnie - can't really say for sure if mine is one of the pictures .. I've been trying to catch her when she just starts to make her web and hopefully get a clearer picture.