Richard’s nature notes 

Towards the end of September friends from Lockington wondered if they had an unusual yellow spider on a vine in their greenhouse. It actually turned out to be an ordinary Garden (= Garden Cross) Spider, Araneus diadematus.  I consulted Geoff Oxford, a spider expert from York University, who provided the following interesting information. He noted it was a female who would soon deposit her eggs in a pale buff, wiry-silk, cocoon a little smaller than a small fingernail.  The female will die at the start of winter and spiderlings will emerge from the cocoon next spring.  Initially the young (which are bright yellow with a black triangle on their back ends - coloration quite unlike that of the adult) stay together in a tight ball.  If disturbed the ball expands outwards, only to contact in again when they sense the danger is past.  Eventually they disperse and spin their own, very small, orb-webs.  This species shows a very wide range of background body colour, which might be induced to some extent by the environment.  This has been claimed for the related Four-spot Garden spider (Araneus quadratus).

Many of us, like Miss Muffet, are not keen on spiders, especially large house spiders. It has been proposed that the nursery rhyme ‘Little Miss Muffet’ was written by Dr Thomas Muffet (1553-1604), a physician and naturalist, for his daughter Patience.  Dr Muffet certainly had a fascination with spiders and even observed that, in rooms, a house spider “doth beautifie them with her tapestry and hangings”. Although some link between Dr Muffet and this rhyme is credible, it would seem doubtful that he was the author because the rhyme apparently first appeared in published form in 1805. 

Another large British spider is the rare, semi-aquatic Fen Raft Spider (Dolomedes plantarius) with a leg span of up to 3 inches.   It is very distinctive with a black or brown body and white or cream stripes along the sides of the cephalothorax and abdomen. There are only a few known sites where it occurs today in the UK (none in Yorkshire). In order to increase the population size, eggs have been collected from East Anglia and the spiderlings reared at zoos and similar organisations around the UK (including at the Deep in Hull) for reintroduction into East Anglia. The purpose of rearing spiderlings in captivity is to try to achieve higher survival rates than would occur in the wild. For more information see

 http://www.dolomedes.org.uk/