Drinking my coffee in the sunshine today I disturbed a spider that was sunbathing — she ran across the table then appeared to scamper through thin air, horizontally, a metre or so to the bushes. I looked more closely and there was her escape wire — a single strand of the finest silk only visible as it moved in the breeze and caught the sun.

What an amazing material spider silk is — strength, elasticity, organic, recyclable — I spent the rest of the morning reading about spider’s webs.

Then we went out to look for butterflies but look what we found!

A mysterious web in hawthorn scrub, and guarding it… Look carefully.

A nursery web spider — she makes a secure three-dimensional pen for her babies until they can fend for themselves. If you don’t believe me — see them magnified!

These will soon have used up all the yolk with which they hatched, be able to produce their own silken threads and catch tiny flies and each other — Mum will release them before there is too much cannibalism and they will disperse to complete their own life cycle. In the UK they live about a year, hibernating during the winter. Mating is hazardous for the males who have evolved various ploys to avoid being eaten by their mate like offering gifts of food to distract the female and also playing dead! Survival of the fittest — only the really clever ones mate more than once!