Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I’m afraid it’s that time of year again when I have to briefly disturb our resident toad in the greenhouse. He or she isn’t too pleased about it but I make sure there’s a quiet corner under a plant tray available as I continue moving pots and pulling up spurge, chickweed and dandelion.
This spider with a plump abdomen is the most common beneath trays and plant pots. This is the male, the one with the ‘boxing glove’ pedipalps.
I wonder if this spider, photographed on our bedroom window yesterday, is one of the spiderlings, now grown up, that we spotted in a cluster by the front door recently.
Two little clusters of spiderlings, hanging low down by our front door.
When I went in close with my Olympus Tough, I must have caught some of the surrounding strands of silk because the spiderlings started to disperse. They soon clustered together again.
This female Common Cucumber Spider, Araniella curcurbitina, scuttled away as I gathered up the ivy that I’d cut back from behind the herb bed. I’d spread an old shower curtain on the ground to catch the trimmings, hence the background; the weave of the cloth gives a clue to the scale: the spider is just half a centimetre long, excluding legs.
The cucumber spider is common on trees, woods and hedgerows, where it spins a small orb web. It has a conspicuous red spot on its underside, just below the spinnerets. The male has boxing-glove style pedipalps (the small front pair of legs).
Identifying it gave me a chance to use my new field guide, Britain’s Spiders, by Lawrence Bee, Geoff Oxford and Helen Smith (2017).
As I already have two spider field guides on my shelf, Collins Field Guide Spiders of Britain & Northern Europe, by Michael J. Roberts (1995), and The Country Life Guide to Spiders of Britain and Northern Europe by Dick Jones (1983), did I really need another?
Dick Jones had support from Kodak and Pentax when he photographed 350 species of spiders and harvestmen for the Country Life Guide (top right), but his Kodachromes can’t quite match the clarity of the digital photographs in the latest guide, which also has the advantage of up-to-date distribution maps, even so, the Country Life Guide is useful to have for a second opinion when you’re checking out a species.
If you were getting serious about identifying spiders, you’ll need a copy of Michael J Roberts’ guide, because, in addition to 288 colour paintings, he includes 1,500 line drawings of the spiders’ reproductive organs, which would be essential if you were trying, for example, to distinguish between the Common Cucumber Spider, Araniella curcurbitina (which is most likely to be the one that I found), and it’s near identical relative, the Cucumber Spider, A. opisthographa.
“The distinguishing features of the male palpal organs are best seen from below,” says Roberts, “and this is difficult with a field microscope, unless the specimen is particularly obliging.”
He explains how to construct a homemade ‘spi-pot’ to harmlessly examine a spider in the field. But don’t feel inadequate if you can’t tell one species of cucumber spider from another because it seems that even the spiders themselves occasionally get it wrong:
“Very rarely, specimens may appear rather intermediate, possibly due to hybridisation.”
Britain’s Spiders, A Field Guide
Collins Field Guide Spiders of Britain & Northern Europe
Dr Geoff Oxford, Eco Talk, The Amazing World of Spiders, YouTube
AFTER RESCUING this long-legged spider from the bath I’m afraid that I kept it hanging around in a bug box for a couple of days waiting until I had time to attempt to identify it.
It made a web too fine for me to see and hung there in its temporary quarters. I’d spotted it hanging down by the bathroom sink a day or two previously.
As this spider is brown and long-legged with no obvious pattern on its back I didn’t think that I stood much chance of identifying it but that is where having a shelf full of field guides proves helpful. I soon found it in Paul Sterry’s Collins Complete Guide to British Garden Wildlife.
Its the Daddy-long-legs spider Pholcus phalangioides, an introduced species which has spread in Britain thanks to central heating. Sterry states that it cannot survive if the temperature drops below 10°C so instead of realeasing it outdoors I release it at the back of the garage by the central heating boiler.
I wonder how long it will be before it blunders into the bath again.
The photograph in Garden Wildlife shows a ‘Mummy-long-legs’ surrounded by her brood of rather cute spiderlings. The bands around the joints on her legs which I’ve shown are clearly visible.
I think that the spider that I drew must have been a female too as she has small palps (the ‘feelers’). Male spiders usually have palps like furry boxing gloves, which are used in mating.
It is also sometimes known as the skull spider its face bears a cartoonish resemblance to a human skull.