Winter brings out the best in spiders

Cobwebs are very easy to overlook or dismiss most of the year. But when the weather turns, they grow ever so glamorous. Dew, raindrops and frost embroider the thin silk strands so these structures become very noticeable — as does the sheer extent of arachnid architecture around us.  

Not everyone appreciates spiders. But most of us can admire a good cobweb, especially when the winter weather picks it out in such beautiful detail. Many spiders don’t make webs at all to catch their supper, but the ones that do have very different styles depending on the family and species.  

The best-known are the orb webs, spun by a range of different spiders including the garden spider, Araneus diadematus. It takes about two hours to make one of these webs — and seconds for us to blunder into it and destroy the whole thing. The garden spider is happy to sit in the middle of the web and admire its creation like a homeowner basking in their porch. Other species retreat under a nearby leaf with a signal thread which twitches as soon as prey lands on the main web. Then they scurry forth.  

Hammock webs are even more difficult to see in good weather. A frosty morning reveals how many spiders are living in just one shrub, with dozens lounging on their own little balconies. These are the money spiders: tiny things of just a couple of millimetres. The larger species in this family (Linyphiidae) add guy ropes to stabilise their hammocks and knock prey into the main structure.  

The best sorts of winter days are the ones that pick out the finer tangled webs on twigs and seed heads. These can look very basic compared with the orbs, but a bit of moisture in the air turns them into fancy fishing lines hanging from the plants on which they’ve been spun. They work just like fishing rods, too: these threads are particularly sticky so that insects get caught easily on them. Even those of us who aren’t fully keen on arachnids can still admire this beautiful form of fly fishing.  

Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator and author of  The Natural Health Service