Spiders and thank you!

At this time of year the early morning dew soaks the grass, and water droplets gather beneath leaves, flowers and stems. Everywhere in the hedges and garden, and across the landscape here at Cabragh Wetlands, can be seen the lacy, fairy-like gossamer threads of spiders’ webs standing out clearly in the morning sun, dew-laden. It is a spectacular sight, and the work of countless tiny spiders which swarm in the fields in the autumn. The young spiders are too small to eat solid food, and depend on the dew drops in the webs and on leaves for survival. They will cling together for warmth, forming pill-sized ‘spider-balls’ which are dotted around the fields in early autumn. They soon separate and look for a likely spot to spin their own tiny webs and catch insects, and before you know it, the air is full of invisible threads.

In early autumn spiders’ webs of all shapes and sizes appear on every hedgerow, drift across long stalks of grass, and sway gently in the breeze from furze bushes, brambles, flower stems, reed beds and every other suitable attachment they can find. You will not have to wander far to find examples of these dangerous little death-traps. There are hundreds of different species of spider, and no two make their web exactly alike. Just as on the Aran Islands each family developed its own unique knitting stitch as a kind of personal identification, so every spider family has its own special pattern for weaving its insect trap, and every young spider spins its little web in exactly the same way as its mother, without receiving a single lesson.

Some weave a mass of tangled threads, others weave their webs very closely. Some construct cobwebby funnels, while others (orb weavers) spin beautiful, regular, open webs (like wheels), with numerous spokes radiating from the centre. The garden spider attaches non-sticky tension lines to nearby sturdy plants and then spirals to form the net of her web. She replaces the outer spirals with gummed silk and oil on her own feet prevents her becoming stuck.

Once caught in the web, an insect seldom escapes, and the more it struggles the more it gets entangled in the silken threads, which are coated with a kind of sticky glue. The spider spends most of her time in her den, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Trapped insects are injected with enzymes to liquidize their tissue, and the spider swallows the liquid. As you look at the early morning webs covered in dew drops and sparkling like jewels in the sun, remember that it is not a good time for the spiders; their snares can too easily be seen because of the dewy fringe, so some spiders will try to shake off the drops to render the web invisible again, and allow them to become efficient killing fields again.

Here at Cabragh we also have the scarily named wolf spider, who does not spin a web, but hunts his victims down. The female builds a nursery web, in which her egg sac is placed.

Arachnophobes beware! Winter will be a hard time for spiders; their favourite victims, flies, have long since gone, and those spiders which survive will seek out a nice warm corner where they can tuck themselves away and pass the time safely to see another spring.

A reminder that the Wetlands Trust is inviting all those who helped organise our recent Open Day (prize-donors too) to a thank-you evening at the Centre on Tuesday next – September 29th at 8.00pm.