After all these years, I’ve created a killing zone.

Right outside our back door.

And not simply covered and stabilised the shale bank with spreading plants which flower for a small part of the year, which was the original intention: with specific plants  chosen for flowers designed to appeal to insects, mainly through the late summer.

But as the plants have established over many years, it’s also clearly become a perfect habitat, I now realise, for garden spiders. Over the last fortnight I’ve spent far too much time observing and photographing one particularly large and attractively marked female spider which has made her home just up the bank from where year my pee-can sits. It’s been a great summer for her too, with her catching countless bees.

Yet, as seems to be the way of our world, seeing these dramatic sagas played out for the very first time this long, hot, dry, sunny summer. has made made me begin to learn more about the life of one of our most common, yet reclusive spiders. We’ve not very imaginatively nicknamed her ‘Shelob’, or sometimes more simply ‘The Blob’, since she’s grown so much in size in a very short time. It suddenly struck me yesterday how appropriate a lifestyle she leads for ‘The Blob’: growing fat on the industrious work of others, ensnaring them, sucking them dry until they’re mere empty shells, and then discarding them beneath her lair. What did that remind me of in today’s Britain, I wonder?

It was a pure fluke that I witnessed her for the first time on August 11th, as I used the pee-can, quite early in the morning. For the only time I’ve witnessed it, I was able to film her reconstructing her web with exquisite ‘skill’ or ‘dexterity‘. Usually, this reconstruction takes place under the cover of darkness, when it’s safer for her to venture out. She herself would make a tasty meal for one of many common invertebrate eating birds if she were spotted. (Wrens, Blackbirds, Dunnock, Great Tits.)

However, words such as skill and dexterity are surely inappropriate for an arachnid with a brain/nervous system of only around 100,000 neurones, and no hands or consciousness as far as we know. Our own brains contain around 800,000 times more neurones. Remember that difference, the next time you contemplate a complex piece of violin or guitar music, and how many years of practice it’s taken the performer with 10 digits to master this skill. Or even typing something like this post on a keyboard.

Orb spiders can web weave very soon after they emerge from their egg in spring, and by the end of the year they’ll likely be dead – few if any will survive into the following spring. (I discussed this with our visiting grandchildren and asked them how she could manage to accomplish such amazing constructions as this, and was sensibly told that she was essentially ‘born’ with that ability. The capability was simply an ‘instinct’, which amounts to the same thing).

Quite so, but if you watch the short videos which I’ve put together with a fraction of my footage, you too might reflect on just how ‘talented’ she is, as an efficient killing machine, with a huge resource of specific, complex skills relevant to the job of finding a regular meal. I know that anything which I might ever do of similar complexity has been laboriously learned over ages, and more often than not requires some sort of instruction or tuition.

So what, if anything, have we inherited at birth with our far greater brains? Or are they just vast blank canvases to be used and gradually filled creatively over the years. Or more likely in recent times abused and controlled by others with dross, or AI generated ‘slop’? Or even left largely empty and vacant? It’s also surely the case, that the only way we can leave behind any knowledge or experience that we’ve gleaned from our life’s passage, (since little other than the basics seems to be passed on in our genes), must be through the transfer in some way – verbal or recorded –  of the accumulated ideas and wisdom which hopefully mount up as we age. There’s a thought for all parents and maybe more importantly grandparents.

But I wonder how many people (like me before this episode) have stood and admired or photographed large complex dew-etched cobwebs on an autumnal morning and never even wondered where the reclusive spider is hiding? So begins a brief dive into some of the fascinating aspects of Garden spider, Araneus diadematus, ecology and life. Including the rarely encountered concept of sexual cannibalism, which I was about to discover, if not in person, then online.

As I’ve hinted at already, by another stroke of good fortune and timing, I was able to point out and talk about the spider, and her almost alien behaviour, with 4 of our older grandchildren who visited us last week. They were extremely helpful with many of the mundane dry-weather tasks we’re always involved with at this time of the year, and fortunately they were fascinated by the spider and no nightmares were reported during their stay with us.

As I returned from dropping them back to parents, a familiar track played off the USB drive Fiona keeps plugged in for such occasions. But one I hadn’t heard in a long while. It immediately took me back to the summer of 1976, when I had a brief, mind numbing summer job packing powdered skimmed milk at Crudgington creamery to raise some funds for university. Dairy cows’ milk production gradually declined with the lack of grass growth that summer, and the student temps. were soon laid off. I noticed on my recent trip back for a school reunion, that the creamery has long gone and is now a modern rural housing estate, in the middle of nowhere.

I wondered what the grandkids will remember in about 50 years of this exceptional summer, and their few days spent at a hot and sunny Gelli Uchaf.  And how different this landscape might then look. These are the opening lines I reflected on as I drove home:

Sometimes I get to feelin’
I was back in the old days, long ago
When we were kids, when we were young
Things seemed so perfect, you know
The days were endless, we were crazy, we were young
The sun was always shinin’
We just lived for fun
Sometimes it seems like lately
I just don’t know
The rest of my life’s been just a show
Those were the days of our lives
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now, but one thing is true
When I look, and I find, I still love you

 

This was the last of the excellent series of music videos Queen made with Freddie Mercury over nearly 18 years, and was filmed in May 1991. Brian May couldn’t make the main filming session, so was recorded later and added into one scene. By November 1991 Freddie had died. Being a cat lover, he had a striking, colourful waistcoat featuring different cats (possibly his own?) made specially for him for this last shoot. But the band’s assessment was that he looked less ill in a monochrome version, so this is what the world got to see. If you watch the video below it gives a little more insight into the filming process, and also explains how Freddie bravely gave one last great performance for his fans and the world.

(Several years after Freddie’s death, a couple I’d never seen before arrived in my clinic in Bristol with a very ancient, on its last legs, thin, black cat. They were shortly due to emigrate to New Zealand. Should they take the cat with them? Did I think the cat was up to it – requiring 6 months in quarantine at the other end? Oh, and by the way, they added, they’d been tasked with looking after the cat by the dying Freddie: it was one of his much loved pets…a reminder of one of the reasons I left the profession for a simpler life).

Are you happy, are you satisfied?
How long can you stand the heat?
Out of the doorway, the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat, look out
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust).

__

As I mentioned, my initial filming of web weaving was the only time I ever witnessed ‘Shelob’ doing this – a task I suspect is normally completed in the very early morning, whilst it’s still dark. Perhaps she put on a special performance to catch my attention, hook me, and achieve some sort of wider notoriety through my records. The web weaving was a delight to watch.

More gruesome was finding numerous honey and bumble bees trussed and wrapped. And many times I watched her drag one of these hapless insects back to her lair beneath a tented geranium leaf held together with more silken fibres. Sadly, I failed to capture the moment when she raced out to a bee which had blundered into the web, and speedily wrapped it.

It seems that many insects of all types can detect in some way the large web and manage to avoid it. Shelob, (named after the giant spider-like creature that J.R.R. Tolkein wrote about in The Two Towers), plays the very patient game, outlasting my ability to sit on a chair and wait. For most of the day, all one can see is her two outstretched banded legs with their tips touching the small fuzz of silk fibres linked to the much larger, distant orbed web. There’s a very good explanation of the web construction in this article by Simon Lester.

My video below shows many details of her existence and hunting strategy.

Reflecting on her patience whilst waiting for a physical sensory judder reminded me of an angler, who, with a baited hook – worm, maggot or grasshopper were all baits I used in my youth – and with no other devices when one cast out a line, waits for a ‘bite’. If a successful timely ‘strike’ is made, there comes that unique thrill of experiencing the juddering contact. Knowing that one was well on the way to catching an unknown prey, invisible at that point beneath the surface. Physically connected through the line with another living creature, desperate to escape. I looked up what words anglers use to describe this very physical ‘feel’, and none seem to be adequately unique or expressive. More than a tremor, different to a thrum, nor quite a judder. Perhaps there should be a new word for this: ‘thrudder’ might be an option – apparently it already has a limited technical use, with a biting fishy tale attached.

After my last post’s discussion on long term memory, and how it might get passed through generations in a largely unknown and epigenetic way, I wonder if this primitive thrill, a precursor to a hoped for kill, has been inherited down the 300 millions years, since our branch of the evolutionary tree diverged from the arachnids. Which are a diverse group, and are themselves part of a wider phylogenetic group called the Chelicerates. This link gives an excellent link to this ancient group of animals. One of the features of all chelicerates is that they have a very narrow gut, so have to consume largely liquid food. Ticks and some other mites do this through sucking blood, or other bodily fluids. Spiders do it by pre-digesting their prey outside the body.

This is where their fangs and palps, together with the venom gland located close to them, is vital. When the spider bites its prey, venom is injected into the other body, and not only does this partially paralyse the prey, it also begins to digest it, along with a spray of enzymes from the spider’s gut which it regurgitates over the trapped prey. The whole process is completed over a much longer time frame once the spider has the insect safely wrapped and back in its lair. There is a much more detailed account of this process, albeit in a different species of spider in Brazil, in this excellent review article ‘Before the first bite’ by Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade. Or click here for more detail (High throughput techniques to reveal the molecular physiology and evolution of digestion in spiders: Felipe J. Fuzita, Martijn W. H. Pinkse, José S. L. Patane, Peter D. E. M. Verhaert & Adriana R. Lopes.)

(This seemed appropriate, from a box of cereal bought in for our younger guests).

So sadly, Tolkein was wrong, though presumably intentionally, about spiders and stingers. Although his fictional Shelob had one and used it to great effect on Frodo, real life arachnids don’t possess a sting for defence or attack. Which is why if you watch the video above, the spider has to be very careful – even when wrapped and bitten, and clearly near the end of life, bees can still try to evert their own sting in self defence.

The other unusual aspect of a garden spider’s curious ecology is that the much larger female regularly practices sexual cannibalism.

There are several much smaller male spiders with their own webs, close to Shelob. We’re nearly at the time of year, when she becomes sexually mature, will emit pheromones to indicate that she’s receptive, and the males will be attracted. There is an element of elaborate courtship behaviour, but if he doesn’t get this right, or she’s just plain hungry, the male is likely to be dealt with in the same way as any other prey. Whether or not he’s managed to successfully impregnate her with his sperm, which happens in double-quick time, he might still be wrapped, eaten and discarded beneath her lair. There’s a great video, filmed and narrated by Andrew Salter, which captures this risky process. Click here to watch.

Before leaving arachnids, I should record that ‘Shelob’ was particularly photogenic. The many garden spiders which always use our metal table as a home, are clearly camouflaged for this different setting, being darkly menacing in colour, and rarely appearing during the day:

___

Whilst the challenge with filming ‘Shelob’ was trying to get any footage of her actually moving in the open, and doing something dramatic, around the same time, I became fascinated by the behaviour of Golden-ringed dragonflies, Cordulegaster boltonii. They’re occasional visitors to the garden in most years, but are regularly seen along our stream, where they patrol short sections, looking for potential prey, and have brief spiralling duels with any other Golden-ringed that strays onto their own stretch. I find filming them nearly impossible with my camera, given their speed, agility, and the often dark background. However occasionally they’ll pause and rest close enough to get a better image. Their lifecycle is, in its own way, as remarkable as the garden spider, with 5 years and multiple moults spent in the aquatic larval stages (called stadia). This prolonged development stage is necessary for them to reach maturity, in the cool and usually food sparse environment of the acidic streams and rivers which they tend to favour.

Once mature, at the appropriate time in late spring/early summer, the larva will climb out onto bankside vegetation at night, split its final case and crawl free to begin its fairly short adult aerial existence. The exuvia (larval exoskeleton) is left behind as a rarely found reminder of their previous aquatic life. It takes a few days for the adult’s exoskeleton to harden and the vibrant colours to develop, during which the dragonfly is quite reclusive – this is known as their teneral stage. Then they’re off to hunt other insect prey and despite a mainly solitary life, also begin to look for a mate which is the final vital link in their lifecycle.

There’s a lot of more general information about dragonflies and damselflies on this excellent video by Liam Smith.

I was lucky to be able to show a couple of the grandchildren one of the Golden-ringed flying along the stream, and even better watch a female, pogo stick vertically up and down near the stream’s margin, stabbing her eggs into the muddy/gravel at the bank edge – something I’ve never witnessed before. If you look closely at the abdomen of the one I photographed in the garden in August, it’s got a muddy section at the end of its abdomen, indicative of having already done some ovipositing. I thought about writing a poem to record some of these features of the longest of our native dragonflies species. And here it is:

 

Golden Rings

 

Somewhere, hid along this bank at night

There hang, as empty gibbets, shells.

Stripped fragile, abandoned thus, for freedom’s flight.

 

It took a while for lymph to flow, for eyes to green

When case had split and crumpled wings were blown.

Once Tiffany stiff, lymph’s switched: your long black tube inflated

 

Still gripping, you crawled a little higher

Gazed down and gawped at how you’d changed –

Gills gone, now breath inhaled: no helping hands, just you.

 

Teneral shades gel slow, and resurrected thus

With armoury beyond the wit of man, it’s time.

The muscles pumped, four netted wings, so light, whirred free.

 

Soon out of sight, your bands shone gold and bright.

All this assumed by banked and plodding gaze,

As territory is traced, now ruthless, restless, hunting hawk.

 

You dart and rise and skim the stream

Clash in twisting spiral blur, like tigers chasing butter tales,

Should rivals stray, engage and fight.

 

Few weeks, at most, you’ll rule riparian air

And once your eggs are stabbed and safe in gravelly bed,

Your multi-million lineage secure, you’re gone.

 

Larval stadia, ferocious too, hide, snatch, kill.

Moult so many times through drought and flood and

When their time arrives, miraculously are synchronised.

 

Silently, they’ll know. And crawl and split and strip

And leaving own exuvia behind, cold and cast, as

Castell’s legionnaires before, secure Melinddwr’s Golden rings.

 

10/08/2025

__

The final Met Office verdict on this summer will arrive shortly. Currently it looks like the warmest on record across the UK, if not in Wales. It’s yet another example of a violent lurch from last year, which was almost uniquely dull, wet and cool. This has been reflected in much I have written and photographed in recent posts, but captured quite graphically by our PV inverter read out. We’d already surpassed the output for the whole of 2024, by August 25th. Given we’ve still 4 months of the year to go, and given that historically our PV output has been remarkably consistent over 15 years, this is quite a significant change.

The lack of rain nearly caught us out, and for the first time in a few years I had to resort to using water stored in our few 1,000 litre IBC’s in an attempt to prevent plant fatalities. With some relief, the grandchildren again came to my aid, and the cheap Bosch Li-ion pump worked perfectly after a couple of years inactivity. A rota of kids with watering cans worked wonders – the small battery holding out for just about the same length of time it took for us all to feel we needed a break.

Even easier was using the hose, once the white washing was completed.

Once again with careful rationing, our house spring water kept going with no problems when many local friends suffered water drying up.

Thank goodness normality is now restored, with a drop in temperatures, winds again, and rain on most of the last 7 days. It’s been a remarkably prolonged low wind-speed summer, and there’s increasing evidence that for whatever reason, wind speeds globally seem to be reducing. We have no problem with this, though it clearly presents an issue for Britain’s increasing reliance on wind based power generation. Perhaps more data will arrive in time to avert our wonderful local landscape, along with much of central upland Wales being blighted with the latest rash of proposed wind turbine sites. As well as ancillary substations and new pylon routes. It’s worth looking at exactly who is behind much of this – a spider’s web of deceit which even Shelob would be impressed by.

This last week, we were jolted by the immediately local plans (which if they go ahead) would see around 40 X 220 metre turbines being erected on the hills to the North east and South of the village. To put this into context, the highest building in Wales is currently less than half this height.

One way or another, hurricanes are on their way, and our village might need to renamed from Rhydcymerau (‘the ford at the confluence of the valleys‘) to something more apt, given it might end up at the centre of a ring of steel towers and blades.

All of this explains a lot of recent observations I’ve made of altered local farm management and activity, and indeed the strange distant linear reflective structure to the east I featured recently. It’s now been joined by 2 others, which are, we think, additional turbines being erected which we knew nothing about.

Still from adversity comes opportunity, and I’ve had the germ of a creative idea which I hope to be working on in the weeks and months ahead.

As the Met Office has just confirmed that 2025 has been the warmest summer on record in the UK ( in a sequence dating back to 1884), how does one balance preserving an inspirational wild landscape, with rich literary and historical interest, with plans to produce vast amounts more ‘green’ energy (when the wind blows) in a nation already self sufficient? And when the financial backers of the proposals are a huge Danish investment firm, and Welsh local government pension funds which are financially on the ropes.

A question to leave hanging in the air.