Titanic struggle: Garden spider versus bumblebee

 

We witnessed a titanic battle between an unfortunate bumblebee and a female garden spider Araneus diadematus that had spun her web on the flight path to Michaelmas daisies in the abbey garden, Hexham, Northumberland last week. For a while it looked like the frantically buzzing bee might escape, but then the spider’s poisonous fangs found a weak spot and the struggle subsided.

Then the spider suspended its prize on a thicker thread and spun it round and round with its feet, wrapping it a silken shroud paid out from the spinnerets on the tip of her abdomen.

The spider season

 There are some fascinating spiders around at this time of the year. This little beauty is a zebra spider, that lives in my greenhouse. It doesn't make a web, it leaps on its prey. The forward-facing pair of its eight eyes are especially large, giving it binocular forward vision and the ability to judge distance accurately.

The garden spider below has spun its web in my greenhouse, across the doorway: I have to duck under it to get in and out. I watched as it caught this wasp and wrapped it in a silken shroud in less that 20 seconds. In the second picture you can see the prey's jaws protruding through the silk, as it tried to bite its way out - unsuccessfully.

This house spider, below, had fallen into our bath - probably entering the bathroom through an open window after climbing up the outside wall. It most likely fell in when it tried to drink from the dripping tap. It's now re-housed in the greenhouse.

House spiders look fearsome but they are easy prey for cellar spiders that trap them in their silken threads, using their long legs to drape the thread around their prey, then paralysing it with venom. They guard their captured prey, usually taking a couple of days to eat them, leaving only a few pieces of its exoskeleton. 

Both cellar spiders and crane flies are commonly known as daddy-long-legs but when the two meet (below) the outcome is never in doubt. Most crane flies that find their way into our house end up in a cellar spider's web.

Smart spider

This rather fine garden spider Araneus diadematus (aka cross spider aka diadem spider) has spun its web above our kitchen waste wheely bin, so ensuring that it will have a plentiful supply of flies attracted into its web.

The colour of these spiders is quite variable - here's a grey one, photographed in almost the same place two years ago.

The Spiders and The Fly

Today's Guardian Country Diary describes a walk along a stretch of the banks of the river Wear at Wolsingham in Weardale, along a footpath known as The Fly. The name probably refers to the fact that this is a good stretch of fly fishing river, but it's also a fine place for finding interesting insects and spiders.

The early part of the walk passes through meadows like this one, which have produced a wonderful display of buttercups this year. This might be because the buttercups, which store starch in their roots over the winter that can be used for rapid growth in spring, have responded to the unusually late spring by growing more rapidly than the grasses.

Then the path plunges into shady woodland with dense vegetation on the edge of the river .......

... before the trees - mostly alders along this stretch - thin our. At this point the soil is mainly fertile silt left by winter floods and the vegetation is luxuriant - these aniseed-scented sweet cicely plants were head-high. If you click here you can see what this spot looked like back in May, when the tallest plants were only ankle-high.

A crane-fly, showing the paired balancing organs rather nicely.

There were a many of these snipe flies Rhagio scolopacea (above) lurking in the last of the hawthorn flowers that bloomed almost until the end of June in the hedgerow along the first part of the path. They're predators, flying out to catch passing insects. Snipe flies have a distinctive habit of resting in this head-down posture in hedges. Those unusually large eyes are exceptionally sensitive to movement of prey passing through their field of vision.

The dense riverbank herbage is perfect habitat for these scorpion flies Panorpa communis. The curled up tail, which looks dangerous, is really the male's specialised genitalia.

Scorpion flies belong to a very ancient order of insects called the Mecoptera and fossils of their distinctive wings show that they evolved at least 250 million years ago. They are thought to be the ancestors of butterflies, moths, caddis flies and true flies. 

The two pictures above are of a female, which lacks the 'scorpion' tail of the male.

Bird cherries are a prominent component of the tree flora here and some have become infested with small ermine moth caterpillars, which weave a silken tent where they can defoliate the tree in comparative safety ....

... although this one has broken cover.

In years when there are heavy infestations whole trees can be enveloped in these silk tents.

There's a diversity of fly species along this footpath - and also plenty of spiders. The three pictures above show the cucumber-green Araneus cucurbitinus, whose abdomen can look like a flower bud. It weaves its snare across the surface of leaves.

This, though, was our most fascinating spider discovery - a ball of recently hatched diadem spiderlings (aka orb web spider, aka garden spider) Araneus diadematus. At this stage they huddle together for mutual security but if you give this seething mass of tiny arachnids a gentle poke .....  

...... the spider-ball explodes and they scatter in all directions.......

... racing away along the silken threads that suspend the ball ....

.... like sailors climbing the rigging of a sailing ship.

This'll Make Washing-up more Interesting ....

It's a sure sign that we're on the threshold of autumn when spiders become more conspicuous. The beautifully marked Araneus diadematus has spun her web outside our kitchen window, perhaps wise to the possibility that the kitchen light will attract prey to the window and into her web. 

Standing at the sink, washing the dushes, will be a bit more interesting now that I can monitor this predator's progress.

The colour of these garden spiders (also known as diadem spiders and cross spiders) is very varied and most in our garden are shades of brown - individuals with this attractive black, white and grey colour scheme are uncommon around here.

For more info on the biology of garden spiders click here

For more spider encounters, click here