With the forecast once again for mist and fog we decided that perhaps the best walk to do was to join in the celebration of all things dank by heading for the darkest and densest woodland in search of fungi - which turned out to be extremely disappointing as the Backies plantations, usually the home of the most varied fungal collection, had very few to show us, although these few...
....did include the first fly agaric of the year, much chewed over by slugs and snails.
However, the lack of fungi was more than made up for by a spectacular display of gossamer which particularly coated the branches of gorse, broom and pine in the clearings where the dew had been able to form.
We searched in vain for the spiders which had created this strange wonderland but found none until we realised that....
....there were two types of gossamer, the much more common denser clumps - seen at the top of this picture - and the more 'standard', but less prolific web-like structures.
We searched in vain for spiders in the amorphous clumps but in the....
....web-like structures we found their owners, a small, brown spider species which was tame enough to allow a very close approach for a picture.
Which leaves open the question of who builds the amorphous gossamer. Is it a different spider or is it the same spider as creates the web and, if it's the latter, why does the spider go to such huge lengths to build the gossamer masses?
The orb web, commonly drawn as a 'typical' spider's web, is made by orb web spiders such as the Garden Spider, Araneus diadematus, probably the one in your photograph. The sheets of gossamer seen across grass and bushes on a dewy morning are made by money spiders (Linyphiidae), and as there are over 270 species of these in the UK, is no doubt responsible for most of the sheets seen in your other photographs.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant Derryck! Thanks for answering my questions so fully. I tried to look this up on the web, with little success.
DeleteJon