October 2026 Ramsbury Nature Notes by Peter Marren
Every September my front doorframe is bridged by a spider's web. It is built, seemingly overnight, by a garden spider, a beautiful orb web with the spider, probably a female, sitting in the middle, awaiting whom she can devour. As spiders go, she's a likeable beast, her bloated body adorned with white spots in the shape of a cross, or, as some say, like a diadem. She goes scampering into the hedge when I open the door. I'm reluctant to disturb her, and so, touchingly, is the postman. Our spider has taken all summer to grow up. Her mate is already dead, possibly killed and eaten by her, and she too will die by the time of the first frosts, leaving her eggs, wrapped in silken weatherproof sacks, to overwinter and then release little orphan spiderlings in the spring.
This spider is one of the few small beasties I can think of with garden in their name. There are remarkably few. Off the top of my head, there are only three moths, a bumblebee, a beetle, and a snail. And yet hundreds of insects and spiders live happily in gardens. Among the latter are tiny money spiders that make sheet webs in the grass. One notices them more in September because after the cooling nights, droplets of dew dapple the webs in the morning. These webs are made by tiny spiders that get around by 'ballooning' on self-made silken threads. This mode of travel can take them a long way, though, without navigational aids, they have no choice where they land.
By the time you read this I hope that Wild Flowers of Ramsbury will be out and on sale in the Post Office. It is the second on our series of village wildlife after Birds of Ramsbury. It is to be followed in due course by Trees, Butterflies and Moths, and Wild Animals.
The reason behind the felling of willow scrub at the far end of Newtown Road was a mystery to many of us. Apparently, it was because the trees were considered dangerous and so had to be felled by contractors working for Eastridge Estate.
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