You might associate spiders with autumn, when big ones appear around our homes and terrify arachnophobes, but many spider species are at their busiest right now, breeding and feeding to reach their full potential.
The meres and mosses of Cheshire are home to a few rarities, so I’ve asked Rich Burkmar, the area organiser for the British Arachnological Society, to be my guide on a spider safari. Little Budworth Common is in a glamorous neck of the woods, sandwiched between a race track and a polo club. But it’s also representative of the county’s wild riches: mixed woodland with heath and boggy areas that provide homes for diverse species.
Out on the exceptionally dry quaking bog of Whitehall Moss, we’re checking the cotton grass. I’m hoping to spot a local star: Sitticus floricola. This jumping spider, “large” at 4mm long, is known only in Cheshire, in bogs on the county’s southern borders – and, curiously, two lochs in south-west Scotland. Adult females are thought to be most active around now, hunting their prey and sewing shut the silky floss of the Eriophorum seed heads to cocoon their eggs.
Rich finds several male jumping spiders, perched on the blood-red tips of sedges. These are Evarcha falcata, scattered here, though more common in the south of England. They have fine markings on their abdomens, almost concentric rings – a white outline, then black and brown in the centre. A little later we find a female; she has a chestnut-brown abdomen and fixes me with that charming jumping-spider stare. Keen eyesight is a must for these active little hunters.
I meet a comb-footed spider with pink candy stripes (Enoplognatha ovata) and several pale young garden crosses (Araneus diadematus). There’s a taupe-coloured crab spider (Xysticus cristatus) and a wandering crab spider (Philodromus aureolus) travelling along the scrub at the bog’s edge. Four-spot orb-weavers (Araneus quadratus) wait patiently beneath the leaves of stray birch saplings; one has successfully snared a grasshopper in its silken tightrope. We’re not so lucky at catching our elusive celebrity. The cotton-grass flowers wilt in the heat and so do I.
