Instead of the inflated hysteria triggered by the recent school “outbreaks” of false widow spiders, let’s spare a moment’s sympathy and take pleasure in one of their relatives, the fen raft spider. Dolomedes plantarius has just three tiny fragmented British territories: one in south Wales, another on the Pevensey Levels in East Sussex and a third, only discovered as late as 1956, here in Suffolk and Norfolk.
A recent expansion in East Anglia is largely the work of our region’s own spiderwoman, Helen Smith, whose main superpower is dedication. She has bred and housed thousands of tiny raft spiderlings in her family home, and then released them at sites like Carlton, where they are presently thriving. There are now about 200 breeding mothers at this Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve and – another triumph for Smith – a growing colony just downstream at the neighbouring Castle Marshes.
This year I was too late to see Britain’s largest arachnid in its prime. June is the moment when female raft spiders start to drape their mahogany and cream-striped bodies as protection over the spun nest of young. Seeing these dedicated mothers-to-be spread across their silk globes reminded me of some Gaia-like goddess wrapped over the mantle of the Earth to defend her charges. They look nothing less than magnificent.
This year I caught their late-summer empire only amid its ruin. Once their young hatch, the mothers die and I got skilled at spotting their withered bodies as they floated at the water’s surface like some weird hairy eight-fronded plant. However, the surviving nests are brimming with a new crop of spiders and these will fatten and grow, sometimes by feasting on fish or adult dragonflies.
These are exciting times at Carlton, not simply because this wonderful creature has reclaimed its old haunt but also because the SWT has acquired an extension to its Waveney Valley holdings. The increase to about 1,000 acres links Carlton to Castle Marshes and prepares the way for a landscape-sized reserve full of marsh harriers, bearded reedlings, water voles, otters, water soldier and Norfolk hawker dragonflies – presided over by the mother of all arachnids.
