Autumn Web Sights

'IF YOU WISH to live and thrive,
Let a spider run alive.' (Old country saying.)
Money spiders, like real money, are not getting the interest they deserve, but in the dew and frost their glistening hammock webs have been coating our gardens, fields and hedgerows with silver.
In the past couple of months, these weavers have dispersed as tiny spiderlings by paragliding in the breeze on threads of silk. Floating 'on gossamer wings' may just be 'one of those things' to Cole Porter, but the spiders are literally God's masters of spin.
The hammock webs are not sticky like the beautiful orb webs of the garden spider Araneus, but they trap small insects in a lacework of fine scaffolding, from the underside of which the spider hangs upside down, ready to pounce. A net gain for very little outlay while its own life hangs by a thread.
At a recent service at St. John's one of our congregation discreetly presented me with a transparent bag in which several tiny long-nosed, dark brown beetles were running around. More of them were apparently running around in the family home.
Surprisingly, they were grain weevils which are more usually associated with grain silos and mills, after harvest. In the past they were a serious food pest. Occasionally they still reach domestic larders in bags of flour.
At home, Joan has been sterilising plant pots to ensure that the vine weevil does not get into the begonia tubers and other flowers or fruits to be stored. All the weevil family have long snouts on which their teeth are sited to enable them to bore into their food material.
The vine weevil is one of the largest, so yes, Sitophilus granarius is the lesser of two weevils.
For the past month our bird feeders have been visited by a marsh tit in addition to the blue, great and coal tits. These were also feasting on the caterpillars of the leaf miner which so disfigure the leaves of the horse chestnut trees. My bird book says the marsh tit is fond of dense thickets and neglected gardens!
Ladybirds are gathering in clusters to sleep through the approaching winter against which they produce their own form of anti-freeze.

Among them are a couple of pine ladybirds, conspicuously black with red spots.

I am seeing more jays this Autumn, flying over on big floppy wings, or burying acorns in the grass. Jay walking is a misnomer; they take giant hops as though on springs.

Beneath our silver birch are a couple of scarlet-topped fly agaric toadstools (the ones depicted in pictures of pixies if they haven't got a gnome to go to.)

Me, I'm off to find a bank vole to see if it can dig up something better than my local branch.

Peter Bateman.