The female of the species

This post is clearly not really about Son of Bob.

Or indeed about the extensive video footage of the night creatures.

Instead, it is about a forty-minute fascination.

I went out with the fox and hog food and set up the trail camera. Then I stood for a bit to see if there were any bats about. On this occasion, I didn’t hear anything for sure – though I think there was some distant clicking at one point.

I switched on the red light just to see my way back down the path and as I did so, I saw the silk of a spider’s web glittering. As I looked at the large and beautiful web, a large orb spider (LS) scuttled into the centre of it. I was quite taken by the spider. As I stared at it, another smaller spider (SS) with a slimmer body and long thing, instead of hairy, legs moved toward LS. SS moved slowly and carefully. LS did nothing. When LS moved, SS ran away.

I was thinking this was interesting, when SS returned and did exactly the same thing. SS ran away again and came back a third time. And a fourth! On this occasion, SS reached out a long leg and touched LS. It seemed to be shocked by its own audacity and ran away faster and further.

I stared at LS. Who was sort of curled up, the legs all tucked under the body. It was on the other side of the web, SS had been on my side. I blew at LS to see if it would move. It blew off the web and into the grass. I felt guilty.

At this point, I realised that for the past fifteen minutes, I had been hearing rustlings around me in the vegetation and in the gravel under the bamboo. I heard a fox crying out – either in conflict or play with another fox or a cat, I suppose. I considered investigating, but turned back to the web.

LS was in the centre of it again!! And SS was there too.

WTF?

I did wonder if SS was the male and LS the female. Some research suggests this is likely. Male orb spiders are much smaller than the females – and often get eaten after mating. No wonder SS was nervous.

I think they were either garden spiders or walnut orb-weavers.

As I walked inside, I saw Mrs Tiggywinkle on the patio - and indeed, there's footage of her and the fox visitor.

One final bit of night action: the following evening I went out to leave food for the creatures at twilight. I did my little whistle for the birds as I could hear robins singing. As I walked back up the path, I felt the beat of wings at my shoulder - that's what Son of Bob does, he flies so close I can feel the displaced air. He landed on the fence and we had a moment. Then he flew into the top of the front lilac tree and sang and sang.