16th May 2016- The day of the spiders

It was an earlier start than usual this morning, and I arrived at the third field at 9.20am. The sun was warming most of the grass tussocks, but in the shade of the hedge, I could see spider webs stretching back up the path, each one misted in a sprinkling of hundreds of tiny dewdrops.

Webs in the third field

 I'd been amazed before by the sheer number of tiny spiders in the third field. With every step, they'd dart away from my descending wellie at speeds too fast for the eye to lock on to.

I'd never really noticed their webs before, though. Flat on the grass, there were hundreds of them, each a rough circle about six inches in diameter. And given that the spiders were only half a centimetre or so long, it seemed unbelievable that they could have created such vast structures, not just once but every single night- for there was no sign of these webs during the day. 

Was that because they were only visible when covered with dew? I didn't think so- I was reasonably sure that I'd have noticed them before; after all they were quite dense tents of silk. It seemed more likely, though not more plausible, that the spiders were constructing them nightly.

In the middle of each web was a funnel like hole with a series of glittering black eyes lurking within. I found that if I was quiet and slow, I was able to get quite close before they retreated into the depths of the web, moving so fast that it seemed they had suddenly blinked out of existence.

One particularly bullish specimen allowed me to get close enough to photograph. He was having breakfast in the sun at the entrance to his web- a rather tasty looking leafhopper.

Eating a leafhopper

I was hoping to end this post by nonchalantly identifying the spider and supplying its scientific name, but unfortunately even with the Collins Field Guide to spiders, identification proved inconclusive. Turns out there are an awful lot of spiders that all look very similar, although, apparently, none that look similar to these. Consulting the internet, I did think I had it at one point but it turned out to be a species from another continent. Which seemed a little unlikely, even for Volehouse.

This leaves me with two alternatives. The first, which is more likely, is that I'm not very good at identifying spiders.  The other is that it is a spider that is completely new to science and in time honoured tradition, I will be able to call it whatever I like. 

In which case, meet Spidey McSpiderface.