adding a drop of shower gel (handy in the bathroom), so they sink and can then be
flushed away. All that has changed. Now every spider has to be caught in a pot and
pickled in meths, labelled, and given to Peter Harvey, who tells me what they are and
notes the information. He also tells me that gin or vodka are better for the pickling, as
they are colourless, but I am not going to waste precious vodka on spiders! Anyway,
they enjoy the meths; I see them wiggling their legs in glee. The commonest one in the
garden seems to be, amazingly, the Garden Spider (see Plate 4), and in the house the
prize goes to the House Spider!
The Garden Spider makes truly amazing webs. They have a set of 'spokes', linked by a
spiral thread, but near the centre the spiral stops, leaving a wheel of spokes only for
several centimetres. At the centre sits the spider, usually upside down. The whole web
is suspended by long threads to nearby 'fixed' objects, except that our spiders seem to
choose the car wing mirror or the roof bar as one suspension point, the other being on
bits of shrubs. What is amazing is the speed with which this process happens. A full
web, about 30cm diameter, is often completed between 11pm or so (car arrives home)
and 7am the next morning (car goes out). Does the spider work all night? How does it
make its web so quickly? Even more amazing, the spider makes two kinds of silk; first
the spokes are made of smooth, non-sticky silk, then the spiral is joined on using sticky
silk. The spider can move about on the web putting its feet only on the smooth spokes,
but catches its food using the sticky spiral. And, of course, spider silks are used in many
ways by different species: some for webs, some to hang on, some as lassoes, and others
to make tunnels to hide in or catch prey in, and probably many more ways I do not know
about. In evolutionary terms, spiders are very versatile, but the answer to almost every
spider problem is 'make silk'. But I still don't like them!
By mid October much of Essex had enjoyed a fair bit of rain and the fungi were coming
up well. We went out to Abbotts Hall Farm, the EWT headquarters on the Blackwater
estuary, for a fungus foray. We were taken on a guided tour, which included aspects of
non-fungal interest. We saw for ourselves the 'managed retreat' of the shoreline where
the sea wall has been breached. The autumn colours of the salt-marsh were very
impressive, and this after only two years. We were surprised at how many species of
salt-marsh plants we could spot, including Golden Samphire, Sea Aster and Cord-grass
(we did not check out which exact species) all still in flower, and endless stands of
Annual Seablite. The seeds must have been carried mainly by the sea water, we supposed.
Fungi were abundant during late October and early November, including lots of kinds
not seen for some time. It was an especially good season for Wax-caps, as you can see in
another article. Widespread frosts in mid-November put paid to the fungi, and snow fell
on the heights of Brentwood and Billericay, and even settled in the north of the county.
Winter had arrived.
10
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 46, January 2005